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 reopen the Sustainable Farming Incentive to new applications.

We have closed the 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.

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.