The Path to Sustainable Farming: An Agricultural Transition Plan 2021 to 2024 November 2020
Foreword
My family have farmed in West Cornwall for six generations. The names of different fields were passed from each generation to the next. We knew our land and every field on each farm and we also knew how best to manage it. I understand the responsibility that farmers feel to the hard work of previous generations and their commitment to the future. So, as we contemplate the biggest change in agricultural policy in half a century, we must design one that is not only right for the farmers of today but is also right for the farmers of tomorrow. The farmers we do not yet know. Those who yearn to farm but cannot get access to land; the farm managers who want to set out on their own; those who left the family farm twenty years ago but wish they could find a way to return.
It is because we are designing a policy for tomorrow’s farmers as well as today’s, that there can be no reprieve for arbitrary area-based subsidy payments. It makes no sense to subsidise land ownership and tenure where the largest subsidy payments too often go to the wealthiest landowners. Direct Payments artificially inflate land rents and stand in the way of new entrants getting access to land. We want to remove the old style, top down rules and draconian penalties of the EU era. So, from next year, the so-called greening requirements such as the three-crop rule will go, and the Rural Payments Agency and other agencies will offer advice and support where possible rather than just penalties. We will also begin the transition away from areabased subsidies and divert the funds released into the environmental and other objectives set out in Section 1 of the Agriculture Act 2020.
In this moment of change, where, for the first time in fifty years, we have a chance to do things differently, we should think through from first principles what a coherent policy actually looks like and chart an orderly course towards it. Over the last century, much of our wildlife-rich habitat has been lost, and many species are in long-term decline. I know that many farmers feel this loss keenly and are taking measures to reverse this decline; but we cannot deny that the intensification of agriculture and the bureaucratic Common Agricultural Policy have taken their toll on wildlife. To address this, we need to rediscover some of the agronomic techniques that my Great Grandfather might have deployed, but then fuse them with the best precision technology and plant science available to us today.
I am confident that the changes set out in this document will help us deliver for nature. 5 At the same time, our plans for future farming must tackle climate change. This is one of the most urgent challenges facing the world. So, as we take control of our agricultural policy, we can deliver the pace of change on land management for environmental benefits that the EU has never managed to achieve. Our farmers and land managers will play a crucial role in the national effort to reach Net Zero and our policies will help them do that. The focus of our future policy will be the three components of Environmental Land Management. The Sustainable Farming Incentive will be a universal scheme open to all farmers and will support sustainable approaches to farm husbandry to deliver for the environment, such as actions to improve soil health and water quality, enhance hedgerows and promote integrated pest management.
Local Nature Recovery will be a new scheme that eventually replaces Countryside Stewardship and will focus on building back nature into and beyond our farmed landscape. Finally, Landscape Recovery will support more fundamental changes to land use in order to significantly enhance the landscape, restore wilder landscapes and enable us to meet our ambitious national targets and commitments, including the government’s pledge to protect 30% of the UK’s land by 2030 and the establishment of a Nature Recovery Network. In addition to these environmental outcomes, we will also have new grants to support investment on farms to help enterprises reduce their costs and improve their profitability. We will champion skills and innovation with greater involvement by farmers and growers in research that seeks to address the challenge of improving productivity alongside opportunities for improving the environment.
We also plan to introduce exit schemes to help farmers to retire and schemes to support new entrants with measures to make more holdings available to those who want to start out on their own. Finally, we recognise that there is currently great reliance on the area-based subsidy payments, so we will change things gradually throughout the transition period. This will be an evolution from the old system to the new, not an overnight revolution. As the legacy payments are wound down, the money released will be made available for a broad range of new schemes. Rather than the prescriptive, top down rules of the EU era, we want to support the choices that farmers and land managers take on their holdings, and we will work with them to refine and develop the schemes we bring forward. If we work together to get this right, then a decade from now the rest of the world will want to follow our lead.
Rt Hon George Eustice
Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
Introduction
On 1 January 2021 the agricultural transition period will start. Between 2021 and 2027, we will gradually reduce and then stop untargeted Direct Payments. We will invest the money that we free up to support agriculture in different ways. We will pay farmers1 to improve the environment, improve animal health and welfare, and reduce carbon emissions. There will be three levels of support aimed at paying for sustainable farming practices, creating habitats for nature recovery and making landscape-scale change such as establishing new woodland and other ecosystem services. Some options will be universally open to all farmers and land managers, while others will be more targeted at a smaller number of large projects. There will also be significant grants made available to support farmers to reduce their costs and improve their profitability, to help those who want to retire or leave the industry, and to create new opportunities and support for new entrants coming into the industry. The dysfunctional, top-down rules and draconian penalties that were a feature of the EU era will be struck down or reformed. The binary divide between advice and enforcement will also be broken down. Instead there will be a modern approach to assurance and regulation with more holistic assessments of regulatory compliance and with greater emphasis on advice and improvement so that farmers and regulators work together to improve standards. This will be underpinned by credible deterrents for severe or serial harm. Within the EU, policies were set for seven years with limited opportunity to improve. We will be more flexible and will co-design our policies with farmers and other experts and we will test, learn and adapt as we move through the transition. We know that the move away from Direct Payments will be a big change for some farmers, so we are going to make the changes over a 7-year transition period to give everyone time to plan and adjust. We will be offering help to those who need it to plan and manage their businesses through the transition. This document sets out the changes we are going to make, and what they will mean for farmers.
What we are trying to achieve
By 2028, we want to see:
• a renewed agricultural sector, producing healthy food for consumption at home and abroad, where farms can be profitable and economically sustainable without subsidy
• farming and the countryside contributing significantly to environmental goals including addressing climate change
What this means for farmers
By 2028, our aim is that all farmers will be:
• running sustainable businesses that do not need to rely on public subsidy
• managing their whole business in a way that delivers profitable food production and the recovery of nature, fusing the best modern technology available today with the rediscovery of the traditional art of good farm husbandry
• able to access public money to help them deliver environmental and animal welfare outcomes on the land they manage and to help their businesses become more productive and sustainable
• meeting clear, relevant and outcome-focused legal standards that champion UK food internationally, prevent environmental harm, protect biosecurity and protect animal welfare
Our planned approach
Our guiding principles for managing the transition are to:
• co-design policy with our farmers
• help farmers do the right things for their businesses, and the environment
• earn people’s trust in our systems and approach
• make things as clear and simple as possible for farmers
• make things fair and reasonable • make things work for those who have to use them 8
• focus on achieving outcomes
• adapt and learn as we go
Between 2021 and 2028, we plan to do a range of things which, taken together, will achieve our aims to:
• phase out Direct Payments and existing agri-environment schemes in a gradual, smooth and orderly way, starting in 2021, with the last Direct Payments being made in 2027
• introduce our Environmental Land Management approach to agri-environment schemes, through pilots and tests from 2021-2024; early roll out of some core elements of all components, particularly the Sustainable Farming Incentive, from 2022; with all three components fully available from 2024 • establish an Animal Health and Welfare Pathway
• provide grant support to help farmers maintain and improve productivity, invest in research, development and sustainability through the transition • replace EU-scheme-based regulation and enforcement with a new, more effective and trusted approach
• provide advice and guidance to farmers to help them make the right decisions for their circumstances
• help people through the transition, including with business planning, training and advice
• help farmers who wish to leave the sector with an exit scheme
When the changes will happen
Throughout the agricultural transition we will make reductions to Direct Payments and invest the money we free up in a better way. Farmers will see their receipts under Direct Payments progressively fall but will have the opportunity to access new schemes as that happens.
This will be an evolution, rather than a revolution. We will learn from new approaches and evolve the components of our policy framework so that they can improve and develop over time. Further information on the phasing of these changes can be found in Annex A. This means that during the early years we won’t be able to answer all the questions people rightly have about how this is going to work. This may be frustrating: we know farming operates to long time frames and we need to provide as much certainty as we can, as soon as we can. But to get this right we need to learn and improve things as we go.
We plan to work openly with everyone with an interest in these changes.
2021
In 2021 we will begin to reduce Direct Payments; improve how existing schemes and regulations operate; and offer grants to help farmers invest in environmental and productivity improvements. We will make changes to cross-compliance, moving away from defaulting to financial penalties, instead using proportionate measures such as better communication.
This will start to change the tone of Rural Payments Agency interactions with farmers to make them more constructive and advisory. We will make the money we save from Direct Payment reductions available through schemes, grants and other types of support for farmers to manage land and their businesses more sustainably. We will continue our programme of tests and trials and start a National Pilot of Environmental Land Management.
We will improve the approach to inspections by Defra agencies, allowing them to better support more farmers to meet minimum legal requirements. We will offer advice and support to help farmers to plan for the transition. During this time, we will work with farmers to co-design the way things will work from 2024 onwards. We know that we have previously not always got things right in the way we design and administer schemes and that this has caused problems for people. We plan to work hard to build trust in these reforms by working openly and collaboratively with the sector, learning and improving as we go to make sure that what we’re doing will work on the ground.
2022 to 2023
We will reduce total spend on Direct Payments by around 15% in both 2022 and 2023.
In 2022 we will start rolling out some core elements of Environmental Land Management. The Sustainable Farming Incentive will support sustainable approaches to farm husbandry to deliver for the environment, such as actions to improve soil health, enhance hedgerows and promote integrated pest management. During 2022 and 2023 we will also make more funding available within the legacy Countryside Stewardship scheme. We will simplify the administration of the scheme further and seek to increase participation rates so that more people and land areas can benefit from being part of the scheme. We will offer a slurry investment scheme from 2022, to help reduce pollution from farming and contribute to the 25 Year Environment Plan and net-zero commitments, and help farmers prepare for increasingly effective and comprehensive enforcement of the rules about slurry management over the transition period.
There will also be some new, standalone programmes to support tree planting, peatland restoration and nature recovery. These will be consolidated within our new Environmental Land Management offer after 2024. We will be launching a new industry-led innovation, research and development scheme to invest in innovation and ensure there is practical translation of world-leading research in agriculture, so that it can directly benefit farmers. Finally, from 2022 we plan to offer an exit support scheme to help farmers who want to retire. We will, at the same time, be offering additional support to help new entrants into the industry.
2024 to 2028
The full roll-out of the three components of our Environmental Land Management offer will begin in late 2024, and we will make sure there is a smooth transition for those in existing agri-environment schemes or involved in pilots. By the end of 2024 we anticipate that legacy Basic Payment Scheme payments will have reduced by about 50%. In 2024, following consultation, we plan to delink Direct Payments from the land. We will then phase the residual payments out, with the last payments made in 2027. Delinked payments will be calculated fairly, based on a reference period. When we delink Direct Payments, we will stop using cross-compliance as the basis for regulation and enforcement or scheme compliance and will move to a new approach that we will co-design with the sector.
Read the full document by clicking download
Foreword
My family have farmed in West Cornwall for six generations. The names of different fields were passed from each generation to the next. We knew our land and every field on each farm and we also knew how best to manage it. I understand the responsibility that farmers feel to the hard work of previous generations and their commitment to the future. So, as we contemplate the biggest change in agricultural policy in half a century, we must design one that is not only right for the farmers of today but is also right for the farmers of tomorrow. The farmers we do not yet know. Those who yearn to farm but cannot get access to land; the farm managers who want to set out on their own; those who left the family farm twenty years ago but wish they could find a way to return.
It is because we are designing a policy for tomorrow’s farmers as well as today’s, that there can be no reprieve for arbitrary area-based subsidy payments. It makes no sense to subsidise land ownership and tenure where the largest subsidy payments too often go to the wealthiest landowners. Direct Payments artificially inflate land rents and stand in the way of new entrants getting access to land. We want to remove the old style, top down rules and draconian penalties of the EU era. So, from next year, the so-called greening requirements such as the three-crop rule will go, and the Rural Payments Agency and other agencies will offer advice and support where possible rather than just penalties. We will also begin the transition away from areabased subsidies and divert the funds released into the environmental and other objectives set out in Section 1 of the Agriculture Act 2020.
In this moment of change, where, for the first time in fifty years, we have a chance to do things differently, we should think through from first principles what a coherent policy actually looks like and chart an orderly course towards it. Over the last century, much of our wildlife-rich habitat has been lost, and many species are in long-term decline. I know that many farmers feel this loss keenly and are taking measures to reverse this decline; but we cannot deny that the intensification of agriculture and the bureaucratic Common Agricultural Policy have taken their toll on wildlife. To address this, we need to rediscover some of the agronomic techniques that my Great Grandfather might have deployed, but then fuse them with the best precision technology and plant science available to us today.
I am confident that the changes set out in this document will help us deliver for nature. 5 At the same time, our plans for future farming must tackle climate change. This is one of the most urgent challenges facing the world. So, as we take control of our agricultural policy, we can deliver the pace of change on land management for environmental benefits that the EU has never managed to achieve. Our farmers and land managers will play a crucial role in the national effort to reach Net Zero and our policies will help them do that. The focus of our future policy will be the three components of Environmental Land Management. The Sustainable Farming Incentive will be a universal scheme open to all farmers and will support sustainable approaches to farm husbandry to deliver for the environment, such as actions to improve soil health and water quality, enhance hedgerows and promote integrated pest management.
Local Nature Recovery will be a new scheme that eventually replaces Countryside Stewardship and will focus on building back nature into and beyond our farmed landscape. Finally, Landscape Recovery will support more fundamental changes to land use in order to significantly enhance the landscape, restore wilder landscapes and enable us to meet our ambitious national targets and commitments, including the government’s pledge to protect 30% of the UK’s land by 2030 and the establishment of a Nature Recovery Network. In addition to these environmental outcomes, we will also have new grants to support investment on farms to help enterprises reduce their costs and improve their profitability. We will champion skills and innovation with greater involvement by farmers and growers in research that seeks to address the challenge of improving productivity alongside opportunities for improving the environment.
We also plan to introduce exit schemes to help farmers to retire and schemes to support new entrants with measures to make more holdings available to those who want to start out on their own. Finally, we recognise that there is currently great reliance on the area-based subsidy payments, so we will change things gradually throughout the transition period. This will be an evolution from the old system to the new, not an overnight revolution. As the legacy payments are wound down, the money released will be made available for a broad range of new schemes. Rather than the prescriptive, top down rules of the EU era, we want to support the choices that farmers and land managers take on their holdings, and we will work with them to refine and develop the schemes we bring forward. If we work together to get this right, then a decade from now the rest of the world will want to follow our lead.
Rt Hon George Eustice
Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
Introduction
On 1 January 2021 the agricultural transition period will start. Between 2021 and 2027, we will gradually reduce and then stop untargeted Direct Payments. We will invest the money that we free up to support agriculture in different ways. We will pay farmers1 to improve the environment, improve animal health and welfare, and reduce carbon emissions. There will be three levels of support aimed at paying for sustainable farming practices, creating habitats for nature recovery and making landscape-scale change such as establishing new woodland and other ecosystem services. Some options will be universally open to all farmers and land managers, while others will be more targeted at a smaller number of large projects. There will also be significant grants made available to support farmers to reduce their costs and improve their profitability, to help those who want to retire or leave the industry, and to create new opportunities and support for new entrants coming into the industry. The dysfunctional, top-down rules and draconian penalties that were a feature of the EU era will be struck down or reformed. The binary divide between advice and enforcement will also be broken down. Instead there will be a modern approach to assurance and regulation with more holistic assessments of regulatory compliance and with greater emphasis on advice and improvement so that farmers and regulators work together to improve standards. This will be underpinned by credible deterrents for severe or serial harm. Within the EU, policies were set for seven years with limited opportunity to improve. We will be more flexible and will co-design our policies with farmers and other experts and we will test, learn and adapt as we move through the transition. We know that the move away from Direct Payments will be a big change for some farmers, so we are going to make the changes over a 7-year transition period to give everyone time to plan and adjust. We will be offering help to those who need it to plan and manage their businesses through the transition. This document sets out the changes we are going to make, and what they will mean for farmers.
What we are trying to achieve
By 2028, we want to see:
• a renewed agricultural sector, producing healthy food for consumption at home and abroad, where farms can be profitable and economically sustainable without subsidy
• farming and the countryside contributing significantly to environmental goals including addressing climate change
What this means for farmers
By 2028, our aim is that all farmers will be:
• running sustainable businesses that do not need to rely on public subsidy
• managing their whole business in a way that delivers profitable food production and the recovery of nature, fusing the best modern technology available today with the rediscovery of the traditional art of good farm husbandry
• able to access public money to help them deliver environmental and animal welfare outcomes on the land they manage and to help their businesses become more productive and sustainable
• meeting clear, relevant and outcome-focused legal standards that champion UK food internationally, prevent environmental harm, protect biosecurity and protect animal welfare
Our planned approach
Our guiding principles for managing the transition are to:
• co-design policy with our farmers
• help farmers do the right things for their businesses, and the environment
• earn people’s trust in our systems and approach
• make things as clear and simple as possible for farmers
• make things fair and reasonable • make things work for those who have to use them 8
• focus on achieving outcomes
• adapt and learn as we go
Between 2021 and 2028, we plan to do a range of things which, taken together, will achieve our aims to:
• phase out Direct Payments and existing agri-environment schemes in a gradual, smooth and orderly way, starting in 2021, with the last Direct Payments being made in 2027
• introduce our Environmental Land Management approach to agri-environment schemes, through pilots and tests from 2021-2024; early roll out of some core elements of all components, particularly the Sustainable Farming Incentive, from 2022; with all three components fully available from 2024 • establish an Animal Health and Welfare Pathway
• provide grant support to help farmers maintain and improve productivity, invest in research, development and sustainability through the transition • replace EU-scheme-based regulation and enforcement with a new, more effective and trusted approach
• provide advice and guidance to farmers to help them make the right decisions for their circumstances
• help people through the transition, including with business planning, training and advice
• help farmers who wish to leave the sector with an exit scheme
When the changes will happen
Throughout the agricultural transition we will make reductions to Direct Payments and invest the money we free up in a better way. Farmers will see their receipts under Direct Payments progressively fall but will have the opportunity to access new schemes as that happens.
This will be an evolution, rather than a revolution. We will learn from new approaches and evolve the components of our policy framework so that they can improve and develop over time. Further information on the phasing of these changes can be found in Annex A. This means that during the early years we won’t be able to answer all the questions people rightly have about how this is going to work. This may be frustrating: we know farming operates to long time frames and we need to provide as much certainty as we can, as soon as we can. But to get this right we need to learn and improve things as we go.
We plan to work openly with everyone with an interest in these changes.
2021
In 2021 we will begin to reduce Direct Payments; improve how existing schemes and regulations operate; and offer grants to help farmers invest in environmental and productivity improvements. We will make changes to cross-compliance, moving away from defaulting to financial penalties, instead using proportionate measures such as better communication.
This will start to change the tone of Rural Payments Agency interactions with farmers to make them more constructive and advisory. We will make the money we save from Direct Payment reductions available through schemes, grants and other types of support for farmers to manage land and their businesses more sustainably. We will continue our programme of tests and trials and start a National Pilot of Environmental Land Management.
We will improve the approach to inspections by Defra agencies, allowing them to better support more farmers to meet minimum legal requirements. We will offer advice and support to help farmers to plan for the transition. During this time, we will work with farmers to co-design the way things will work from 2024 onwards. We know that we have previously not always got things right in the way we design and administer schemes and that this has caused problems for people. We plan to work hard to build trust in these reforms by working openly and collaboratively with the sector, learning and improving as we go to make sure that what we’re doing will work on the ground.
2022 to 2023
We will reduce total spend on Direct Payments by around 15% in both 2022 and 2023.
In 2022 we will start rolling out some core elements of Environmental Land Management. The Sustainable Farming Incentive will support sustainable approaches to farm husbandry to deliver for the environment, such as actions to improve soil health, enhance hedgerows and promote integrated pest management. During 2022 and 2023 we will also make more funding available within the legacy Countryside Stewardship scheme. We will simplify the administration of the scheme further and seek to increase participation rates so that more people and land areas can benefit from being part of the scheme. We will offer a slurry investment scheme from 2022, to help reduce pollution from farming and contribute to the 25 Year Environment Plan and net-zero commitments, and help farmers prepare for increasingly effective and comprehensive enforcement of the rules about slurry management over the transition period.
There will also be some new, standalone programmes to support tree planting, peatland restoration and nature recovery. These will be consolidated within our new Environmental Land Management offer after 2024. We will be launching a new industry-led innovation, research and development scheme to invest in innovation and ensure there is practical translation of world-leading research in agriculture, so that it can directly benefit farmers. Finally, from 2022 we plan to offer an exit support scheme to help farmers who want to retire. We will, at the same time, be offering additional support to help new entrants into the industry.
2024 to 2028
The full roll-out of the three components of our Environmental Land Management offer will begin in late 2024, and we will make sure there is a smooth transition for those in existing agri-environment schemes or involved in pilots. By the end of 2024 we anticipate that legacy Basic Payment Scheme payments will have reduced by about 50%. In 2024, following consultation, we plan to delink Direct Payments from the land. We will then phase the residual payments out, with the last payments made in 2027. Delinked payments will be calculated fairly, based on a reference period. When we delink Direct Payments, we will stop using cross-compliance as the basis for regulation and enforcement or scheme compliance and will move to a new approach that we will co-design with the sector.
Read the full document by clicking download
