Sustainable Farming Incentive: how the scheme will work in 2022

Sustainable farming incentive details published today 2 December 2021

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delilah

Member
And no disrespect to Janet Hughes. She’s doing a good job. She can only play the hand dealt by her political masters and their “advisers”.

Edited to add: looks like it’s coming our way though.


I think you do Janet, and yourself, and everyone else on here, down. I think the message from the grassroots is finding its way to the top. Have a look at the direction of travel with all this, with regards what the SFI standards look like today compared to 6 months ago. Keep going. Keep pushing. Because I think it's an open door.
 

DrWazzock

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
SFI has to be about more than carbon sequestration.
I don’t mind it being partly about sequestration. Nothing wrong with that. But unless it also recognises food supply security, rural communities, natural habitat and indeed social justice then it will be a failure.
I’m not actually a fan of subsidy at all but if there is any justice then permanent pasture needs recognising for the carbon it already stores, the relatively benign low input production systems it entails, the habitat it offers, the permanent soil cover it affords and the low incomes and harsh conditions that many custodians of permanent pasture endure. Don’t abandon those good folk.
 

DrWazzock

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
There is even a small amount of arable land here that would benefit from going into long term grass. It was ploughed up during the war, is really too steep to farm without run off and erosion, it’s probably contributing 80% of the erosion off 20% of the area. Or it’s just too poor or fragile to be viable for arable production. Grass that down for starters. It would build OM. Carry on with BPS for all PP. Simple as can be. Job done.
Let those who wish to trade carbon credits trade them on the markets. Why should that sort of scheme need taxpayer support? It should be self funding surely.
 

steveR

Member
Mixed Farmer
There is even a small amount of arable land here that would benefit from going into long term grass. It was ploughed up during the war, is really too steep to farm without run off and erosion, it’s probably contributing 80% of the erosion off 20% of the area. Or it’s just too poor or fragile to be viable for arable production. Grass that down for starters. It would build OM. Carry on with BPS for all PP. Simple as can be. Job done.
Let those who wish to trade carbon credits trade them on the markets. Why should that sort of scheme need taxpayer support? It should be self funding surely.
I think a lot of us have land like that. I have pulled 35-40ac of snotty, heavy land back from the Contract lads, and bunged it into Herbal Leys for 5 years, which can only do it good. Ready for when the Country needs food fast, fertility built up nicely.

No carbon trading mind :)
 
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topground

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
North Somerset.
i suspect the pilot scheme will demand a fair bit of feedback (1-2 days a month they say) so will probably cost me - it’s certainly not money for nothing
Open ended commitment from you at the whim of the civil service job creation scheme. @Clive the SFI pilot scheme contract you have signed provides you with no equality in dispute resolution and DEFRA can alter it at will.
Good luck! (to be read with a German accent)
 

holwellcourtfarm

Member
Livestock Farmer
Who are these people who are “damaging” soils? Myself maybe harvesting beet? Maybe my neighbour harvesting spuds or the sprout growers desperately trying to get sprouts on the table in difficult conditions.
It’s alright to take a high moral tone if all you ever do is direct drill a few combinables on easy land but we can’t live on wheat rape and field beans.
That's a really fundamental point.

The evidence is growing just how damaging intense cultivation, as required for root crop and veg establishment, can be to soil biology. However, as you rightly say, the country needs a supply of these foods so they have to be grown somewhere. The best we can do is to try to minimise the impact of what we do.

I can recall fields looking like the Somme after we harvested sugar beet and getting forage maize off caused horrific damage some years.

Some folk are successfully direct drilling forage maize into retained ground cover but beet and veg crops just wouldn't compete.

Maybe growing them only as a single year in a long rotation is the best we can do? They are never going to fit into an SFI soils standard imho though.

DEFRA have made it clear that food supply security has nothing to do with ELMS. That could be its downfall in the end as it forces a choice between farming for the environment or for food production.
 

DrWazzock

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
That's a really fundamental point.

The evidence is growing just how damaging intense cultivation, as required for root crop and veg establishment, can be to soil biology. However, as you rightly say, the country needs a supply of these foods so they have to be grown somewhere. The best we can do is to try to minimise the impact of what we do.

I can recall fields looking like the Somme after we harvested sugar beet and getting forage maize off caused horrific damage some years.

Some folk are successfully direct drilling forage maize into retained ground cover but beet and veg crops just wouldn't compete.

Maybe growing them only as a single year in a long rotation is the best we can do? They are never going to fit into an SFI soils standard imho though.

DEFRA have made it clear that food supply security has nothing to do with ELMS. That could be its downfall in the end as it forces a choice between farming for the environment or for food production.
We normally have half the farm in 5 year grass leys. These are rotated, then the beet is only rotated round the lighter half of the farm, never grown in the clay. We feel like we are doing the right thing as an overall compromise. I don’t really know what our OM levels are like, possibly not great, but I don’t think that farming around OM levels would really help us. Yes it would be nice if they were better, but as it is we have a commercial operation here that works reasonably well and looking around me it appears to be far from an environmental disaster. We direct drill where feasible, we min till for beet some time. It’s all part of the management to do as little damage as possible.
 

DrWazzock

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
And really livestock are essential to our operation and without them our OM levels would undoubtedly be lower unless we took land out of production for “regeneration.”
Constant negativity from many sources over livestock has I hope temporarily put my brother off keeping them. And that’s a real loss and shame in my view. That’s the effect of policy on the ground so it needs thinking about carefully.
I’ll leave it at that.
 
@Janet Hughes Defra

Please have a look at what Miscanthus has done whilst having the support of BPS - Much of the lower quality ground Miscanthus is grown on will be unable to cover the costs of the annual harvest operations even on previously established crops without access to at least some of this ELMS / SFI money.
 
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ajcc

Member
Livestock Farmer
Isn't there a contradiction in government policy, they are advocating reducing livestock numbers whilst claiming they are planning to improve OM levels, doesn't one require the other?
Ssshh don’t confuse @Janet Hughes Defra and her gang with an elephant in the room! They’ll likely be advising we grow elephant grass and undertake a “mammoth” reintroduction programme.
 
That might be what she meant to say, but here is what she actually said in 3 separate posts:
To clarify, the aim is to collect a good spread of samples – so you get a good indication of levels of soil organic matter across the land you’ve entered into the scheme.

When I said the samples would be ‘per hectare, not per field’, I did not mean to imply that we’d require ‘one sample per hectare’. We’re trying to move away from this kind of prescriptive approach.

I was saying that the number of samples would depend on the size of the area of land being sampled. In other words, on a small field you’d need fewer sample, and on a large field you’d need more samples.

We’ll explain more about how to do this in guidance we’ll issue next year.
 
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SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

  • 0 %

    Votes: 78 42.9%
  • Up to 25%

    Votes: 63 34.6%
  • 25-50%

    Votes: 30 16.5%
  • 50-75%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 75-100%

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

    Votes: 5 2.7%

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

  • 1,286
  • 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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