Sustainable Farming Incentive: how the scheme will work in 2022

Sustainable farming incentive details published today 2 December 2021

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midlandslad

Member
Location
Midlands
Wasn’t the intention that professional help wouldn’t be required to complete the new scheme applications?

The current BPS is easy to complete and a lot of people rely on professionals to apply.

ELMS is three schemes and then the SFI for example is spit into different standards with different record keeping requirements for each standard. Then you throw in the additional standards coming down the line, slurry scheme, CSS, farm
Investment scheme.

Can someone please explain how this won’t require professional advice and I very much doubt those professionals will be working for peanuts? Therefore a lot of the pot will not be staying in the bank for long.
 

holwellcourtfarm

Member
Livestock Farmer
No one in their right mind trusts DEFRA and for a grass farm this works out at less than £12 an acre less sampling and admin costs this is an enormous waste of public money in setting up a scheme that is designed to fail and non starter.
Listening to Becky Willson from the Farm Carbon Toolkit last night she knows a company doing robust soil sampling to a standard that supports accurate soil carbon trading who want over £200/Ha to cover costs......

Close sampling at 3 different depths all individually collected, packaged and lab tested.

Anthing less is guesswork to some degree

@holwellcourtfarm

Any back of fag packet figures?
My post number 44 not answered yet?
Typically trading at about £20 - £30/T CO2 at present I believe. You may be sequestering ½ T/acre, may be 5 T/acre, may even be emitting several T/acre and have none to spare, all depends what soils you have and how they are managed (& how much your farming operation itself emits - do you use much tillage, diesel or fertiliser?).

The FCCT calculation I did this morning came out at -260T CO2 across our 42 Ha but I wouldn't stake the farm on it.
 

holwellcourtfarm

Member
Livestock Farmer
Wasn’t the intention that professional help wouldn’t be required to complete the new scheme applications?

The current BPS is easy to complete and a lot of people rely on professionals to apply.

ELMS is three schemes and then the SFI for example is spit into different standards with different record keeping requirements for each standard. Then you throw in the additional standards coming down the line, slurry scheme, CSS, farm
Investment scheme.

Can someone please explain how this won’t require professional advice and I very much doubt those professionals will be working for peanuts? Therefore a lot of the pot will not be staying in the bank for long.
The CAAV must be rubbing their hands.......
 

Still Farming

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
South Wales UK
Listening to Becky Willson from the Farm Carbon Toolkit last night she knows a company doing robust soil sampling to a standard that supports accurate soil carbon trading who want over £200/Ha to cover costs......

Close sampling at 3 different depths all individually collected, packaged and lab tested.

Anthing less is guesswork to some degree



Typically trading at about £20 - £30/T CO2 at present I believe. You may be sequestering ½ T/acre, may be 5 T/acre, may even be emitting several T/acre and have none to spare, all depends what soils you have and how they are managed (& how much your farming operation itself emits - do you use much tillage, diesel or fertiliser?).

The FCCT calculation I did this morning came out at -260T CO2 across our 42 Ha but I wouldn't stake the farm on it.
More money grabbing verification outfits then .☹
 

holwellcourtfarm

Member
Livestock Farmer
More money grabbing verification outfits then .☹
Would YOU sign a legal contract to buy carbon sequestration services without a robust proof of supply?

I wouldn't......

And that's before we get into how long you are contracting to keep it buried for (50 - 100 years under the higher value contracts).

When Carbon reaches £100/ T, and I believe it must go well above that at some point, I'll start looking seriously at offering it as a service.

Who else but farmers and foresters can genuinely offer the service in the quantities the world needs?
 

Still Farming

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
South Wales UK
Would YOU sign a legal contract to buy carbon sequestration services without a robust proof of supply?

I wouldn't......

And that's before we get into how long you are contracting to keep it buried for (50 - 100 years under the higher value contracts).

When Carbon reaches £100/ T, and I believe it must go well above that at some point, I'll start looking seriously at offering it as a service.

Who else but farmers and foresters can genuinely offer the service in the quantities the world needs? possibly Government will be stepping in
Maybe Government will step in as part of these schemes??
 

Henarar

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Somerset
Quite a few lowland Grazing farms have small fields like you. The scheme wording disadvantages these badly as they need more 'parcels' sampled per farm Ha than an Anglian arable outfit with big open parcels.

My smallest parcel is 1.5 Ha. I have an arable neighbour whose smallest parcel is 12 Ha and averages way bigger.

We both get the same rate per Ha to cover testing.

Unfair.
@Janet Hughes Defra
why does the scheme penalize those with small fields ?
I thought this was an environmental scheme, do you not think hedges are good for the environment ?
Our whole farm would fit in one field in some places, they would need one test we would need 25 for the same area why is this ?
 

Goweresque

Member
Location
North Wilts
Quite a few lowland Grazing farms have small fields like you. The scheme wording disadvantages these badly as they need more 'parcels' sampled per farm Ha than an Anglian arable outfit with big open parcels.

My smallest parcel is 1.5 Ha. I have an arable neighbour whose smallest parcel is 12 Ha and averages way bigger.

We both get the same rate per Ha to cover testing.

Unfair.

I'm not really following all this because I have no intention of going within a million miles of it, but surely if you are testing soil you have to take samples on an acreage basis (ie one sample per x acres, where x is going to be no greater than 1) so a 100 acre field needs the same number of samples as 100 one acre fields? Surely no-one is going to take one sample per field regardless of size? So the testing cost will largely be a multiple of your acreage, not the number of fields you have?
 

andybk

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Mendips Somerset
@Janet Hughes Defra
why does the scheme penalize those with small fields ?
I thought this was an environmental scheme, do you not think hedges are good for the environment ?
Our whole farm would fit in one field in some places, they would need one test we would need 25 for the same area why is this ?
it penalises us because we already fit the criteria they are after , small species rich fields , loads of hedges , trees/ scrub minimal fert , job done , all the big arable outfits with no hedgerows and mined soils with plenty of chem use are the ones needed to change ,and they usually have the time to influence DEFRA decisions though land agents , advisors , (that cholderton video most of which we already do for free ;) )
they wont get to 70% without us though
 
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andybk

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Mendips Somerset
I'm not really following all this because I have no intention of going within a million miles of it, but surely if you are testing soil you have to take samples on an acreage basis (ie one sample per x acres, where x is going to be no greater than 1) so a 100 acre field needs the same number of samples as 100 one acre fields? Surely no-one is going to take one sample per field regardless of size? So the testing cost will largely be a multiple of your acreage, not the number of fields you have?
no you have to test each parcel you put in the sfi , not on a farm basis . that bars all the small farms out due to cost and complication
 

Henarar

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Somerset
it penalises us because we already fit the criteria they are after , small species rich fields , loads of hedges , trees/ scrub minimal fert , job done , all the big arable outfits with no hedgerows and mined soils with plenty of chem use are the ones needed to change ,and they usually have the time to influence DEFRA decisions, (that cholderton video ;) most of which we already do ) though they wont get to 70% without us
so the SFI is aimed at big farmers with big fields and the other two strands of ELMS is aimed at big land owning non farmers.
isn't it nice to feel valued and rewarded for environmentally doing the right thing by a scheme that is meant to reward you for doing the right thing. gives you that warm fuzzy feeling. :rolleyes:
 

holwellcourtfarm

Member
Livestock Farmer
I'm not really following all this because I have no intention of going within a million miles of it, but surely if you are testing soil you have to take samples on an acreage basis (ie one sample per x acres, where x is going to be no greater than 1) so a 100 acre field needs the same number of samples as 100 one acre fields? Surely no-one is going to take one sample per field regardless of size? So the testing cost will largely be a multiple of your acreage, not the number of fields you have?
Great quotation but that's how it sounds so far, one test per RPA land parcel.

Ours vary from 1.5 to 18 Ha!

The 1.5 Ha one has 2 clear different soil types as well
 

andybk

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Mendips Somerset
so the SFI is aimed at big farmers with big fields and the other two strands of ELMS is aimed at big land owning non farmers.
isn't it nice to feel valued and rewarded for environmentally doing the right thing by a scheme that is meant to reward you for doing the right thing. gives you that warm fuzzy feeling. :rolleyes:
always been the same , dont forget set aside , oil seed payments , beetle banks , the list is endless of the big pig snouts in the trough , now NE ad RSPB are holding the reigns
 

topground

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
North Somerset.
I did one a month or so back. I would be happy to set another one up. I don’t expect to see much difference in the result.
Still waiting for a follow up enquiring why I did not return their dodgy SFI Pilot contract not that I will be holding my breath waiting. Apparently we have to wait until the new year for the numbers. 900 signed up for the pilot quoted in the latest blog. What about competition to guess how many actually signed up and how many of them are all grass farms?
 

B'o'B

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Rutland
no you have to test each parcel you put in the sfi , not on a farm basis . that bars all the small farms out due to cost and complication
Except under Farming Rules for Water you will have to test each field anyway, LOI test doesn't add much cost.
 
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SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

  • 0 %

    Votes: 79 42.5%
  • Up to 25%

    Votes: 65 34.9%
  • 25-50%

    Votes: 30 16.1%
  • 50-75%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 75-100%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 100% I’ve had enough of farming!

    Votes: 6 3.2%

Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

  • 1,287
  • 1
As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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