New limits to SFI.

Hindsight · Mar 25, 2024

Steevo said:
If something is within the rules and in fact incentivised by the rules, and contributes to the purpose and aims of the scheme….I cannot see how it can be considered “taking the pee”.

If 1% of businesses decided to follow the Net Zero agenda and switch all their vehicles to 100% electric zero emissions vehicles whilst taking the government incentive on offer…..surely the government would be shouting it from the rooftops about how successful their policy is and that more businesses should be following suit.

I suggest a better analogy is 100% of businesses in a short time switch to EV and the government provided support infrastructure cannot cope due to government failure to predict the impact of their EV change subsidy scheme. Ash for Cash anyone?

farmerm · Mar 25, 2024

AndrewM said:
Defra announces cap on SFI actions to maintain food production - Farmers Weekly

Defra has responded to industry concerns about food security by announcing a cap on the amount of some environmental incentives farmers in England can

www.fwi.co.uk

from the farmers weekly article, they have interpreted it as:

"New applicants to the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) scheme will only be able to put 25% of their land into six SFI actions that take land out of food production."

"Defra says the six actions “were always intended to be implemented on smaller areas of the farm – something the new measures will protect”. The rest of the SFI actions will remain uncapped."

"
To date, Defra has received more than 15,000 SFI applications and issued over 14,000 agreement offers to farmers in England.
The vast majority of land in the SFI scheme continues to produce food.
However, about 1% of farmers that applied to SFI 2023 have applied to put 80% or more of their farm into these six non-productive actions."

The situation would be vastly different it Wheat was £250/T and we where not coming out of the worse autumn crop establishment in living memory....

lloyd said:
Good news proper crops are heading back up in money .
OSR up 8 euros so far today.
Lets face it sfi offers poor value for the general tax paying public.

growing produces poor risk:return for farmers!

Green oak · Mar 25, 2024

Steevo said:
If something is within the rules and in fact incentivised by the rules, and contributes to the purpose and aims of the scheme….I cannot see how it can be considered “taking the pee”.

If 1% of businesses decided to follow the Net Zero agenda and switch all their vehicles to 100% electric zero emissions vehicles whilst taking the government incentive on offer…..surely the government would be shouting it from the rooftops about how successful their policy is and that more businesses should be following suit.

it’s not as thou the merchants take the pee. Buying bulk loads of urea pre war floating about till some daft farmers panic brought At £700+tonne. Or glyphosate at £200 a can. Soon as we do something the government tells us to do to keep in business. Well we are taking the pee. The whole corporate agriculture industry is corrupt. Oh and there were 5 lorries all rejected in a line last Friday for bugs. The boat left 2 hours before.

livestock 1 · Mar 25, 2024

If they are worried about food security why don’t they pay the ones that don’t want to farm sfi and pay the rest of us who do want to farm a production payment

lloyd · Mar 25, 2024

neilo said:
On the other hand, 1% of farmers (landowners) have decided to take the p*ss, so they are cracking down on it.
I don’t see a problem with a 25% cap tbh.

MYOB Neilo and get those trees planted.

Grass And Grain · Mar 25, 2024

neilo said:
On the other hand, 1% of farmers (landowners) have decided to take the p*ss, so they are cracking down on it.
I don’t see a problem with a 25% cap tbh.

Would have been a sensible thing to have a % cap from the beginning. Perfectly logical when you've a budget to keep and a responsibility to feed 78,0000,000 people. The food security responsibility stretches to whole of the UK.

What there is a problem with is the unfairness. DEFRA have messed up with a schoolboy error, and now there's going to be a two tier farm support system.

Case290 · Mar 25, 2024

There’s no environmental benefit taking more than 25% land out of production. I ask my self how do they know this stuff or is someone just dreaming it all up..

Hindsight · Mar 25, 2024

Grass And Grain said:
Would have been a sensible thing to have a % cap from the beginning. Perfectly logical when you've a budget to keep and a responsibility to feed 78,0000,000 people. The food security responsibility stretches to whole of the UK.

What there is a problem with is the unfairness. DEFRA have messed up with a schoolboy error, and now there's going to be a two tier farm support system.

They took back control. But that is off topic so no reply required.

andybk · Mar 25, 2024

gave it all to the land agents and fkn charities ,

Spencer · Mar 25, 2024

Goweresque said:
Incidentally, where's the 'Janet said so' brigade now?

@Clive

Having a meltdown on X last I heard 🫣

lloyd · Mar 25, 2024

Imo there have been far too many consultees/organisations who don't have
farmers best interests in mind only getting hold of the money and this is the end result.

DrWazzock · Mar 25, 2024

If we were going to make a more detailed scheme work, then every farm should have been allocated a DEFRA liaison officer. Said officer would have presented a range of environmental options to the farmer appropriate to farm location, proximity to watercourses, soil type, gradients etc etc. The farmer would have the choice as whether to take the options up but they would at least have been rationed and designed with some useful purpose in mind.
Instead of that we have a free for all where I can declare a whole field as a “grassy corner” whether it serves any useful purpose to the environment or not. We have a system that motivates farmers to maximise whichever option pays best with scant or no regard as to whether it’s environmentally sensible. Even now with the 25% rule I could sow 50 acres of birdseed. My big neighbour could sow 1500 acres. That’s just insane in my view yet it’s still possible. An insane waste of taxpayers money.

DrWazzock · Mar 25, 2024

Why didn’t they just leave BPS alone running in parallel with perfectly sensible stewardship? Said this from the start.

farmerm · Mar 25, 2024

onthehoof said:
So it’s taken Defra 5 years to draw up this scheme and then 5 minutes to realise they’ve ballsed it up

No, 4 months to realise, 5 minutes spent considering a “fix”

farmerm · Mar 25, 2024

onthehoof said:
So the 1% have had half the budget and the 99% share what’s left

That math don’t math. BPS £230/ha highest SFI is about 4x that /ha 1% X 4 is 4% of the budget not 50%. With those farmers not engaging and the vast tracts of perm pasture and hills with little scope to claim back anything close to bps, they will be left with a big underspend

farmerm · Mar 25, 2024

Goweresque said:
What did I say a while back?

Keep working peasants!

A true cynic would say that this move is designed to reduce the amount of money that productive farmers can claim, leaving a hefty balance to be made available to the usual suspects for 'rewilding' down the line. I notice there's nothing in this announcement about restricting the ability to re-wild large areas........

A realist would say, penny dropping that paying farmers to produce less food is open to a campaign of damaging headlines in an election year..

Clive · Mar 25, 2024

Goweresque said:
Incidentally, where's the 'Janet said so' brigade now?

@Clive

i’m not in the uk at the moment so catching up a little on this news but from what i understand existing agreement will be honoured

will agree it’s rather mixed messages however - just a month ago they were upping the payments on ahl2 etc !

Clive · Mar 25, 2024

e3120 said:
Phew - @Clive can stand the lawyers down. Better retrieve the rapeseed dresser from the scrapman, though. Funny how some are always lucky....

What chance of mere mortals getting simple apps back for month end that are held up with submission errors, when the system is down and staff bombarded?

luck = preparation meeting a moment of opportunity

Henarar · Mar 25, 2024

Nart that hasn't happened before

YorkshireAndrew · Mar 25, 2024

Janet Hughes on a webinar a few months ago said ( not quoting) “We (Defra) have a lot of work to do to regain the trust of farmers “ . Not a very good start .

New limits to SFI.

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Up to 25%

25-50%

50-75%

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100% I’ve had enough of farming!

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