Sustainable farming incentive - handbook for 2023 has been published

Janet Hughes Defra

Janet Hughes Defra

Member
✓
Afternoon all,

Today we've published a handbook containing all the detailed information about the sustainable farming incentive offer for this year.

The handbook is here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/sfi-handbook-for-the-sfi-2023-offer

An overview blogpost is here: https://defrafarming.blog.gov.uk/2023/06/21/sfi-more-ways-to-enhance-your-income-productivity-and-the-environment/

The handbook sets out all the detailed actions, rules and requirements of the scheme, in a single handbook that you can download and print (because this is what many of you have asked us to do, rather than spreading the information across multiple pages on GOV.UK).

We have made some changes to the scheme in response to feedback from you and other farmers and through our pilot and early rollout of the scheme. In particular, we have made a much broader range of options available, made the scheme more flexible so you can pick the individual actions you want to do rather than having to do them in set combinations or percentages of land entered into the scheme.

Finally, I know I have not been present on the forum in the consistent, ongoing way many of you would like. I understand why that has been frustrating and annoying, and I am really sorry about that. I have found that am just not able to personally engage on every thread on an ongoing basis, I'm afraid. However I do really want to find a way of addressing your questions and hearing your feedback all the time, not just when we publish new information, so I am working with @Clive to put in place a better, ongoing, sustainable way of managing this so that you can ask questions of me and my team and give us feedback when they arise. We will let you know where we get to with that as soon as possible.

For this particular thread, I am planning to be online at least daily, for the next week, to answer your questions about the information we've published today. I have posted this as a question with voting, and if you could upvote questions that you particularly want me to address it would be helpful if you could vote for them so that I can prioritise my time and attention, and I will then do my best to work through as many of them as I possibly can. I hope this is helpful and look forward to your questions.

If you have questions about your specific farm situation, the best thing to do is contact the RPA contact centre and they will be able to point you in the right direction.

Thank you.
 
Solution
T
Honestly this is where you get farmers feedback and where you should have laid out questions before any bps was removed , it seems the cart was sent out before the horse was even born you now have the whole budget and are asking us if we want to participate with tearms that are ludicrous to any business owner for little in return but a few quid and a "your doing your bit for the environment"? the forms are so complex that it might as well be written in binary code.
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Henarar

Henarar

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Somerset
Two Tone said:
To all those signing up to SFI and taking the shilling to not grow food on land that really should be doing so, I ask you this question:

How do you feel about that and do you really think it truly is using ‘Public money for THE public good’?

Yeah, I didn’t think so either!

@Janet Hughes Defra ?
Click to expand...
oh yes, well a lot better than a lot of public money is spent on
 
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redsloe

redsloe

Member
Location
Cornwall
Two Tone said:
To all those signing up to SFI and taking the shilling to not grow food on land that really should be doing so, I ask you this question:

How do you feel about that and do you really think it truly is using ‘Public money for THE public good’?

Yeah, I didn’t think so either!

@Janet Hughes Defra ?
Click to expand...
It's difficult isn't it? Well, maybe.
I'm going to play devils advocate.
Surely the last 12 months shows how much the folks living off the back of farmers really like screwing us over and your suggesting we should have a conscience about not giving our produce away? We're still in a situation where cheap food is deemed compulsory and as a result are quite happy to see our prices are collapsing! Beef falling fast now but concentrates for feeding our calves is still over £400/ton. Tell me why or how that is?

This thread appears very one sided, it needs some balance. I wonder what's going to happen when some ordinary harvest yields at ordinary prices come rolling in?

Fair bit of moaning then too I imagine.
 
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Henarar

Henarar

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Somerset
Two Tone said:
Ironically, MacEnroe just said on the BBC at Wimbledon:
“The older I get, the more I realise just how good I used to be!”

WTF!
There is no hope for any of us is there?

Just put the whole farm into SFI and feck the hungry.
“Let them eat Winter bird food”
Click to expand...
yep why not,
yourself, kids, family feed them and not worry about the rest, they can get a window box
 
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Vader

Vader

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
People's Republic of South Yorkshire
DrWazzock said:
Seriously who has time to be tagging and recording saplings? It’s as much as I can do just to get the hedger on and get them trimmed. Trees in hedges are quite a nuisance. Having to lift up and down, back up with the hedger etc, then hand trim to get the last bits. Then the tree will rip something off your combine unless you keep sawing branches back. A tree branch folded the grain elevator right back on my cousins combine. About £3k damage. And folk want more of this? Really? What a load of old rubbish.
Click to expand...
Yes, we plenty of woods about and mature trees. Why would you want to let new trees grow in a hedge to make more work.??
 
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Humble Village Farmer

Humble Village Farmer

Member
BASE UK Member
Location
Essex
Two Tone said:
To all those signing up to SFI and taking the shilling to not grow food on land that really should be doing so, I ask you this question:

How do you feel about that and do you really think it truly is using ‘Public money for THE public good’?

Yeah, I didn’t think so either!
Click to expand...
Food, although important, is not the only public good.

The concept of all out production hasn't been very good for the environment or farmers' pockets.

SFI is an attempt at redressing that. Yes it's not perfect but the CAP caused harm to farmers, the environment and consumers.

"Please give us back the bps so we can carry on losing money in the way we have become accustomed" isn't the answer
 
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D

DrWazzock

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
Economic output is the thing that ultimately pays for public services via taxation.
Turn farming from being a source of economic output to a net recipient of taxpayers money (just another public service) and what makes up the loss to the exchequer?
BPS was like seed corn. It brought back many times what it cost.
But a lot of these "schemes" will bring back nothing on the economic output front. They are simply a drain on public funds for very little tangible benefit let alone economic benefit.
So the public services funding deficit just gets bigger and bigger and as a nation we get poorer.
Slippery slope and all that. Oh well.
 
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D

delilah

Member
DrWazzock said:
Economic output is the thing that ultimately pays for public services via taxation.
Turn farming from being a source of economic output to a net recipient of taxpayers money (just another public service) and what makes up the loss to the exchequer?
BPS was like seed corn. It brought back many times what it cost.
But a lot of these "schemes" will bring back nothing on the economic output front. They are simply a drain on public funds for very little tangible benefit let alone economic benefit.
So the public services funding deficit just gets bigger and bigger and as a nation we get poorer.
Slippery slope and all that. Oh well.
Click to expand...

To decide where the money should go, you can add to that the multiplier effect.
Give a livestock farmer a £ and he in turn passes it to the arable farmer.
Give an arable farmer a £ and he passes it to a ski resort.
I generalize.
 
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Two Tone

Two Tone

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Moreton-in-Marsh, Glos
Humble Village Farmer said:
Food, although important, is not the only public good.

The concept of all out production hasn't been very good for the environment or farmers' pockets.

SFI is an attempt at redressing that. Yes it's not perfect but the CAP caused harm to farmers, the environment and consumers.

"Please give us back the bps so we can carry on losing money in the way we have become accustomed" isn't the answer
Click to expand...
Can’t argue too much with that……..until you have the food inflation that everybody is talking about.

The answer has got to be somewhere in the middle. Because as sure as hell, the Public do not think that their taxes being spent well on all these so called environmental schemes.

Not helped by media organisations such as the BBC banging on to the Climate change bed-wetters about the CO2 situation that it simply ins’t possible to be the cause of!


I drove to my old stamping ground of Suffolk last weekend and I just couldn’t believe how much land that used to be farmed beautifully looks such a mess in so called environmental schemes.
If it was marginal land, then great, but good land?

As regards the bird populations, we have seen a massive increase in Buzzards, Red Kites and Rooks.
The Rooks seem hell bent on eating the very seeds on the AB9 crops that are supposed to feed all the other birds during the Winter.

But as long as Cwiss is happy!
 
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W

Walton2

Member
DrWazzock said:
Economic output is the thing that ultimately pays for public services via taxation.
Turn farming from being a source of economic output to a net recipient of taxpayers money (just another public service) and what makes up the loss to the exchequer?
BPS was like seed corn. It brought back many times what it cost.
But a lot of these "schemes" will bring back nothing on the economic output front. They are simply a drain on public funds for very little tangible benefit let alone economic benefit.
So the public services funding deficit just gets bigger and bigger and as a nation we get poorer.
Slippery slope and all that. Oh well.
Click to expand...
One of my questions , a couple of years ago, was asking for the numbers of DEFRA/RPA/NE staff that were tasked to administer/inspect the approx 85000 farmers claiming BPS.Of course there was no answer.There would be a mountain of paperwork to check, contracts to verify, trees to count, noxious weeds to estimate if SFI/ELMS is adopted by the 70% that they hope for. We have been told that administration costs should be similar…but similar to what!!
I agree with your point on economic output. But Tony Blair’s answer to increasing GDP was by increasing the population with immigration, so with that sort of logic what hope is there for ‘producers‘ of any description.
 
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Humble Village Farmer

Humble Village Farmer

Member
BASE UK Member
Location
Essex
Two Tone said:
Can’t argue too much with that……..until you have the food inflation that everybody is talking about.

The answer has got to be somewhere in the middle. Because as sure as hell, the Public do not think that their taxes being spent well on all these so called environmental schemes.

Not helped by media organisations such as the BBC banging on to the Climate change bed-wetters about the CO2 situation that it simply ins’t possible to be the cause of!


I drove to my old stamping ground of Suffolk last weekend and I just couldn’t believe how much land that used to be farmed beautifully looks such a mess in so called environmental schemes.
If it was marginal land, then great, but good land?

As regards the bird populations, we have seen a massive increase in Buzzards, Red Kites and Rooks.
The Rooks seem hell bent on eating the very seeds on the AB9 crops that are supposed to feed all the other birds during the Winter.

But as long as Cwiss is happy!
Click to expand...
Food inflation is not reflected in farmgate prices. Otherwise the fields you saw in Suffolk would be growing profitable crops as equal partners in the food system, or somewhere near equal.

This is "greedflation" caused by retailers increasing margins. I read earlier that the cereal farmer makes 0.1 of a penny profit on a 114p loaf of bread. So it's no wonder that farmers are choosing lower risk environmental options instead.
 
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ajd132

ajd132

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Suffolk
Two Tone said:
To all those signing up to SFI and taking the shilling to not grow food on land that really should be doing so, I ask you this question:

How do you feel about that and do you really think it truly is using ‘Public money for THE public good’?

Yeah, I didn’t think so either!

@Janet Hughes Defra ?
Click to expand...
I’m taking the shilling but I haven’t had to take any land out of production
 
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J 1177

J 1177

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Durham, UK
Oilseed said:
Well I've spent about 3 hours reading this thread to try and learn about the SFI and most of that time has been spent learning of every bodies political views, most of you should have become MPs or Civil servants as you seem more interested in running the country than farming!
Click to expand...
So you think sfi, is a positive for farming then?
 
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SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

  • 0 %

    Votes: 109 38.5%

  • Up to 25%

    Votes: 107 37.8%

  • 25-50%

    Votes: 41 14.5%

  • 50-75%

    Votes: 6 2.1%

  • 75-100%

    Votes: 4 1.4%

  • 100% I’ve had enough of farming!

    Votes: 16 5.7%
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