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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether his Department plans to introduce a replacement scheme following the closure of the Sustainable Farming Incentive scheme.

We have closed Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) for new applications because the current SFI budget has been successfully allocated, with large-scale uptake of the scheme and 37,000 live SFI agreements delivering towards our environmental targets.

Now is the right time for a reset: supporting farmers, delivering for nature and targeting public funds fairly and effectively towards our priorities for food, farming and nature.

We will be reforming the SFI offer to direct funding towards SFI actions which are most appropriate for the least productive land and have the strongest case for enduring public investment. This will allow us to align SFI with our work on the Land Use Framework and the 25-year farming roadmap to protect the most productive land and boost food security, whilst delivering for nature.

A budget will be set for the coming year in the Chancellor’s spending review. Now the scheme is fully allocated it will temporarily close to new applicants while we will work with the farming sector to prioritise funding for future years so we can target those who will benefit most before reopening to new applicants.

We expect to publish more information about the reformed SFI offer in summer 2025. This will include an indication of when we expect to re-open SFI for applications.