Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what recent assessment her Department has made of the impact of the SFI scheme on the planting of harvestable legumes as break crops.

The Government is committed to supporting protein crops and their contribution to domestic food supply and is working with the sector to investigate the opportunities to support wider growing of protein crops.

Actions within the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) can support pulse crops, including through companion cropping. We have assessed impacts of SFI on food production and some actions now have lower payment rates and a limited area of 25%, so they are less competitive against break crops including pulses.

To date the Government’s Farming Innovation Programme (FIP) has committed over £7.2m support within a sustainable farm-based protein competition.

Governments Genetic Improvement Networks (GINs) also include research on pulse crops.