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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if he will take steps to provide financial support to upland farmers, in the context of the closure of the Sustainable Farming Incentive scheme.

We fully recognise the importance of the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) for upland farmers – and we strongly want the scheme to be available to them as we move forward.

We have closed 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.

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.

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.

In the meantime, as announced on 25 February, we’re increasing HLS payment rates. We believe this uplift better reflects the contributions made by those with HLS agreements and will support the continued protection and management of these sites.

We will also open the rolling application window for Countryside Stewardship Higher Tier (CSHT) this summer and have published information that sets out what upland farmers can do now to prepare to apply for CSHT.