Farmers don’t want to be full time hedge-trimmers

[Steevo]

Farmers don't want to become full-time hedge trimmers​

Farmers are desperately keen to help the environment, but they can't become full-time conservationists just to qualify for funding
JAMIE BLACKETT17 September 2021 • 5:00pm

Environment Secretary George Eustice must be relieved that formal scrutiny of his department’s flagship scheme didn’t surface until reshuffle planning was already well under way.
The National Audit Office (NAO) has revealed that just five per cent of eligible farmers in England expressed interest in a pilot of the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI), which entails being paid to plant hedgerows at a rate of £24 per 100m of hedge and £49 per hectare of woodland, with different sums to look after water features and grassland. Defra called this a “lucrative offer”. Plenty of farmers disagree.
The widespread rejection of the scheme matters because it goes to the heart of the post-Brexit settlement for British agriculture. This is a trust issue.
The Brexit prospectus promised that farmers would be better off. We were told that although free trade would lead to food prices falling and that the “basic payment” element of the subsidy would disappear, farmers would be able to make up for collapsing incomes by being paid to “curate” the landscape for “public goods” like wildlife and water quality.
When the small print emerged it became clear that the sustainable farming incentives actually fail to cover the opportunity cost of farming less intensively or the bureaucratic stress and time spent dealing with civil servants, let alone the loss of the £70 per acre basic payment.
There has been, perhaps unreasonably, an expectation that escaping the tentacles of the EU would lead to a bonfire of regulations. Instead, the things have only got worse. “Stakeholders” like the RSPB and Natural England – neither of whom have glowing records on conservation – have lobbied successfully for the rules for farmers to be consistent with the rigid templates that apply on the land they manage. Civil servants have worked assiduously to create more red tape, with the aim of preserving as many apparatchik jobs in the inspectorate as possible. Worryingly, the rubric for the scheme includes the promise that it will “grow and adapt” over time, classic Sir Humphrey speak that suggests plenty of scope for more rules.
Most farmers are desperately keen to help the environment, but the complexity of the scheme essentially requires them to become full-time conservationists in order to qualify for funding. Besides ignoring the importance of growing food at home and the fact that most farmers came into the industry to be farmers, this is unviable on the rates on offer. The NFU mantra that “you can’t be green if you are in the red” is true and many will now either be planning to plough every inch of their land to maximise their incomes, or perhaps finding a second job and as a consequence taking less care of the difficult bits of their farms, such as hedges and ponds.
Unless Defra gets this right the situation will worsen. Eustice needs to get back to the drawing board.
Jamie Blackett is the author of Red Rag to a Bull, Rural Life in an Urban Age (Quiller)

Farmers don't want to become full-time hedge trimmers

Farmers are desperately keen to help the environment, but they can't become full-time conservationists just to qualify for funding

www.telegraph.co.uk

 

[Kevtherev]

Food or badgers that is the big question?

 

[Muddyroads]

An ironic title given the restrictions on hedge trimming dates!
Must admit I’m seriously doubting if we’ll be partaking in the new scheme, and that’s speaking as a tenant on a marginally viable farm.

 

[Tarw Coch]

Food or badgers that is the big question?

Perhaps some of those top end restaurants could serve roast badger, would fit in well with some of the other crap they sell.

Me, I’m a pie and chips man. Rolly potatoes @Kevtherev

 

[toquark]

I think the most effective way to deal with the new regime is to ignore it. Farm as you want to farm and let them keep their money.

Low uptake will send a very clear message to those in charge that their ill thought out schemes aren’t fit for purpose.

For many this will mean a complete stock change in how they operate, but surely better that than be reliant on the likes of the RSPB and their apparatchiks in DEFRA.

 

[br jones]

Food or badgers that is the big question?

i belive in ze war badger ham was eaten a lot

 

[serf]

I think the most effective way to deal with the new regime is to ignore it. Farm as you want to farm and let them keep their money.

Low uptake will send a very clear message to those in charge that their ill thought out schemes aren’t fit for purpose.

For many this will mean a complete stock change in how they operate, but surely better that than be reliant on the likes of the RSPB and their apparatchiks in DEFRA.

Couldn't agree more

 

[Courier]

"Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI), which entails being paid to plant hedgerows at a rate of £24 per 100m of hedge and £49 per hectare of woodland,"

Seriously ? ?

£49 to devalue land with a current value of £20,000 which produces something in the way of food ......?

This should have been announced 169 days ago. It basically says "Fu** you, farmers, you voted us in, you've done what we wanted of you"

 

[Steevo]

"Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI), which entails being paid to plant hedgerows at a rate of £24 per 100m of hedge and £49 per hectare of woodland,"

Seriously ? ?

£49 to devalue land with a current value of £20,000 which produces something in the way of food ......?

This should have been announced 169 days ago. It basically says "Fu** you, farmers, you voted us in, you've done what we wanted of you"View attachment 986454View attachment 986455

£24 to plant 100m of hedge. You’d struggle to get a someone to plant 1m of hedge in the garden for that price!

 

[HatsOff]

Betrayal by the Conservative Party. They won't listen until their seats are at risk.

 

[steveR]

£24 to plant 100m of hedge. You’d struggle to get a someone to plant 1m of hedge in the garden for that price!

It wouldn't cover the plant costs...

Tells you how much our time is valued I guess. Bit like the small scale land owner who asks for a "bit of topping" or a "quick run round with the hedge cutter", and expect a tenner to be enough recompense, yet pay their Audi main dealer £170/hr for a service.

 

[Ffermer Bach]

£24 to plant 100m of hedge. You’d struggle to get a someone to plant 1m of hedge in the garden for that price!

so, 100m is 500 to 800 plants, a worker must be worth at least £12/hour, 7 whips a minute. Damn, last hedge I planted I would have happily employed the civil servant who worked out that rate, that would have been the best £36 I would ever have spent! I am presuming, that rate is plus the 25 to 50p a whip, and £10 plus or so a metre for the fencing (and a bit for the digger to tidy up the hedge bank too)?

 

[bluebell]

what will bite the conservative govt is people in the so called stockbroker belt around london are now waking up to their ? green and pleasant countryside is rapidly being lost to development? And they dont like it ?

 

[toquark]

what will bite the conservative govt is people in the so called stockbroker belt around london are now waking up to their ? green and pleasant countryside is rapidly being lost to development? And they dont like it ?

They’ve already backtracked on a lot of their residential development promises on the back of pressure from the Home Counties.

 

[upnortheast]

"Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI), which entails being paid to plant hedgerows at a rate of £24 per 100m of hedge and £49 per hectare of woodland,"

That`s odd, in the current mid tier scheme planting hedges is £11.60 / m ??

 

[delilah]

He has got it wrong. The SFI as it stands doesn't offer £24/100 metres to plant hedges, that sum is offered to manage hedges. Planting would be a capital item.
I have only scanned the article but I can't see where he says what the SFI should look like. Did I miss it ? Or is it just another whinge ?

 

[delilah]

I think the most effective way to deal with the new regime is to ignore it. Farm as you want to farm and let them keep their money.

Low uptake will send a very clear message to those in charge that their ill thought out schemes aren’t fit for purpose.

For many this will mean a complete stock change in how they operate, but surely better that than be reliant on the likes of the RSPB and their apparatchiks in DEFRA.

You miss the point in all of this. You can't just ignore it and let them keep their money. Because they wont keep it, they will give it all, as you put it, to the likes of the RSPB, via the other two strands to ELMS. And they in turn will use it to make your life harder. I'm not entirely sure of the ways in which they would do this, haven't given it much thought, but £3 Billion/ yr is a lot of money.