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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what estimate the Government has made of the number of farmers expected to retire under the Government's proposed exit scheme.

Our proposed lump sum exit scheme will provide support for farmers in England who wish to exit the industry. By doing so, this will free up land for new entrants and those farmers who wish to expand.

In 2018, we undertook a survey of around 1,000 farmers as part of our planning for the Agriculture Act. 6% of those surveyed said they wanted to leave farming but felt they were not able to do so at that time. Financial reasons were given as the main barrier.

There will be a range of factors which will affect individual farmers' decisions about whether they wish to take the lump sum and exit farming. The consultation will be used to gather further evidence about likely uptake.

Our consultation can be found here: https://consult.defra.gov.uk/agricultural-policy/lump-sum-and-delinked-payments-england/. This consultation is open until 11 August 2021.