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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps his Department is taking to help (a) farmers and (b) food producers in Hitchin and Harpenden constituency use sustainable farming methods.

Farming in England is now going through the biggest change in a generation. As government, our approach to working with the farming sector is changing too. Food is still the primary purpose of farming, and always will be. But if we want farming and food production to be resilient and sustainable over the long term, then farming and nature can and must go hand in hand.

In 2022 we started to roll out some core elements of the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI). We will gradually expand the scheme until all elements are available from 2024/25 onwards. In its early years, the scheme will focus on supporting and maintaining environmentally sustainable farming improvements that most farmers can make, such as soil and livestock management, pesticide use and fertiliser use. The core elements of the SFI that are available as of June 2022 are: arable and horticultural soils standard; improved grassland soils standard; and moorland standard which will be followed by the Annual Health and Welfare Review.

Local Nature Recovery is the improved and more ambitious successor to the Countryside Stewardship scheme in England. It will pay for locally-targeted actions to make space for nature in the farmed landscape and the wider countryside, alongside food production. We plan to make an early version of the scheme available to a limited number of people in 2023 as part of our plans for testing and rolling out the scheme. We will then roll out the scheme across the whole country by the end of 2024.