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

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the extent to which those taking the economic risk will be rewarded under the Environmental Land Management Schemes.

We are designing our Environmental Land Management (ELM) schemes with this in mind, many of the actions we will pay for through the ELM schemes will help farmers and land managers reduce their costs, improve their efficiency and improve the natural environment. For example, the nutrient and integrated pest management standards will help optimise use of inputs, helping to reduce costs whilst also potentially maintaining or even improving yields. Other actions in our schemes can enable farmers to generate an income from unproductive corners and edges of fields, using hedgerows to improve productivity (for example as windbreaks or shelterbelts), and improving soil health. The payments are also intended to support and de-risk the transition for farmers wanting to adopt more sustainable farming approaches. We use ‘income foregone plus costs’ to calculate payment rates and we have recently reviewed and updated them to ensure they fairly reflect changes in costs.