LIVE - DEFRA SFI Janet Hughes “ask me anything” 19:00-20:00 20th September (Today)

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Hello, I’m Janet Hughes. I’m the Programme Director for the Future Farming and Countryside Programme in Defra – the programme that’s phasing out the Common Agricultural Policy and introducing new schemes and services for farmers.



Today (20 September) between 7pm-8pm, I and some of my colleagues will be answering your questions about our work including the Sustainable Farming Incentive, Farming in Protected Landscapes, and our test and trials.



We’ll try to answer at least 15 of your top voted questions, so please vote on the questions you’d most like me to answer.



You can read more about our Future Farming policy on our blog.



I’ve answered some of your questions previously: you can watch the videos on the Farm TV or Defra’s YouTube (part 1 and part 2 of the videos). I’m happy to answer any follow-up questions about that, as well as other questions you might have.



Housekeeping:

  • We’ll do our best to answer as many questions as we can, in the order in which you’ve voted on them
  • If there are top voted questions we can’t answer immediately for whatever reason, we’ll do our best to come back with answers to them in the next few days
  • If this works for you as a format, we’ll do it again, so let us know what you think!


Looking forward to seeing you at 7pm!
 
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johnpeels

Member
Livestock Farmer
I hear what you say about trust (see earlier answer). We will be looking at how complaints and appeals work both for schemes and regulation with a view to making sure we are, and are seen as, fair.
I am sure you hear, but I doubt you really have any idea of the depth of the mistrust. In the past I have been excluded from increasing an area of Countryside Stewardship 'because you already have quite a lot'
 
Unless DEFRA understand that ‘sustainable farming’ means profitable farming this whole exercise is a waste of everyone’s time other than those who wish to see the demise of family farms in the UK.
We do see it that way - that's why we have a mix of investment in productivity and environment schemes. The resilience fund is also open now, with 19 organisations providing free business planning advice https://defrafarming.blog.gov.uk/2021/07/13/the-future-farming-resilience-fund-providers-named/
 

Phil P

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
North West
Are these schemes not in danger of just becoming more jobs for the boys?
From the outside it appears that the money allocated to agriculture is just been soaked up more and more by advisors who just advise more advisers and inspectors. As usual by the time it gets to the end of the line (the farmer) there’s only pence left in the pot to pay for these schemes!
 

flinty

Member
Arable Farmer
Thanks for the reference to the Severn Trent Water scheme - we'll have a look and see what we can learn from how they've done it.

I agree we need to make the new schemes as straightforward as possible for people and we're working to do that, in partnership with farmers in our tests and trials and the pilot.

We have a waterbody buffering standard in the pilot, and we've designed it to be simple and straightforward to follow. We'd welcome any feedback on that.
1) I Like the idea of margins but have no standing water, will I still be included? Also we have a big problem with uninvited visitors who are likely to use them for dog walking. we have skylarks and would prefer they are left in peace? Would I be able to stop the margins before gateways?
2) Wildlife and access don't mix well, unless you are taking money off the visitors so they are the priority. If your schemes involve increased access we won't join. If you are serious about increasing access, remove our liability. All shop car parks are at the customers risk, why should we be liable when we have no choice? Office car parks etc should be accessible out of hours to spread the load, good places to cycle and skateboard.
 

steveR

Member
Mixed Farmer
At the risk of being rude, I will repeat the essence of my earlier question, which was also asked by others.

Can DEFRA give a categorical assurance that ANY and ALL land put into a future scheme option, that is not rotational, will put it in writing for any SFI Agreement, that this land cannot be subject to a retrospective action from NE and/or any other body, to lock it into non productive state, and that on the cessation of the Agreement, the land can return to Agriculture if wanted by the Applicant.
 
Hi, how are ordinary family farms going to make up the loss of say 25000 grand in the next few year, buy 2025 fertiliser will be 400£ a ton, everyone can't do B&B or holiday let's, obviously the prise of stock, milk, barley will need to double like everything a farmer needs has.
The answer to this will be different for every farm - it depends on your type, size, location and tenancy as well as your preferences. We've commissioned 19 organisations to provide free business planning advice to help farmers think through their options, whether that's around increasing your income including through schemes or adding value to your produce, reducing your costs eg by lowering inputs, or reducing waste eg through managing pests and diseases.
 

Clive

Staff Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lichfield
OK going to close this thread for now as I’m sure Janet doesn’t want to be here until midnight !

thank you to all that contributed and thank to Janet and her team for making this possible

hopefully it’s something we can do more of in the future ……….

unanswered questions will be addressed soon as they can I’m told over coming days
 
Hi Phil, I'm just going through and answering the questions I didn't get to in the very short hour we had on Tuesday.

I very much recognise this concern, and that's absolutely not what we want to happen. To avoid this, we're testing new schemes with farmers as we develop them to make sure they're accessible to all. That includes our tests and trials, and our pilot for SFI, but also smaller-scale testing of service designs and ideas. If you'd like to get involved in that, please get in touch - we need as many critical eyes on the things we're developing as possible.

One of the things we're testing in the pilot is whether it's possible for farmers to participate in sustainable farming incentive without needing advisers - that's our intention, we just need to test and develop the service with farmers to make that possible.
Are these schemes not in danger of just becoming more jobs for the boys?
From the outside it appears that the money allocated to agriculture is just been soaked up more and more by advisors who just advise more advisers and inspectors. As usual by the time it gets to the end of the line (the farmer) there’s only pence left in the pot to pay for these schemes!
 
At the risk of being rude, I will repeat the essence of my earlier question, which was also asked by others.

Can DEFRA give a categorical assurance that ANY and ALL land put into a future scheme option, that is not rotational, will put it in writing for any SFI Agreement, that this land cannot be subject to a retrospective action from NE and/or any other body, to lock it into non productive state, and that on the cessation of the Agreement, the land can return to Agriculture if wanted by the Applicant.
I'm afraid I can't give a categorical answer to that, no, because it's likely to depend on the particular option you've entered into. What we can do however is make absolutely clear what the situation is for each option so that you can enter into it with that information - we will make sure we do that.
 
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SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

  • 0 %

    Votes: 79 42.0%
  • Up to 25%

    Votes: 66 35.1%
  • 25-50%

    Votes: 30 16.0%
  • 50-75%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 75-100%

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

    Votes: 7 3.7%

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

  • 1,292
  • 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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