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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what funding is available for farmers to implement (a) buffer zones and (b) other measures aimed at preventing agricultural pollutants from entering rivers.

Levels of water pollution are unacceptable, and water pollution is a crime. We are working with farmers through a suite of measures to reduce agricultural pollution.

Defra’s Environmental Land Management schemes pay farmers for the delivery of environmental benefits, including improved water quality. The Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) pays farmers for actions that will improve the water environment by reducing runoff and erosion, maintaining soil cover and creating buffer strips and margins. There are 35,000 active SFI agreements in England. Countryside Stewardship Higher Tier (CSHT) pays farmers, land managers and foresters for more locally-targeted actions relating to specific locations, features and habitats. In December we published details of the improved CSHT offer, which includes several new actions to improve water quality. We will be opening up CSHT for new applications in the summer.