Higher tier stewardship

Brisel

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Midlands
2018 start Higher Tier here. I worked on the basis that it will take DEFRA more than 5 years to come up with a workable ELMS plus the Chancellor has guaranteed to honour all existing CS contracts.
 

DRC

Member
Read the threads about the difficulties people are having in getting paid,before rushing into anything . I believe the higher tier scheme is targeted on particular sites, so all depends if your new farm offers anything they deem important. Otherwise it’s the mid tier, which I didn’t feel offered enough incentives .
Good luck with the new place.
 

Brisel

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Midlands
I hope that the problems with payments become less now that the RPA have the administration & we'll be free of the bureaucratic nonsense from Brussels sometime in the future. The RPA will have less scapegoats though they are still woefully underfunded. Putting that aside, if you've already identified your least productive parts of the farm or have them lying fallow post ELS/HLS because you realise why you took those areas out, perhaps it's time to get something other than just greening on those areas.

I'll bet every farm has 3-10% of its area that does nothing but lose money. It may be awkward corners, outlying, shaded, wet, steep or whatever but the productive value is low. Why not get another payment for it? This is just the kind of thing that Gove wants to see. England has dropped from 70% participation in ELS/HLS to around 16% in CS. To reverse the decline in the red list species we need over a third of the country in CS measures.

Don't forget that landscape level projects like the farm clusters will be targeted for funding even more. https://www.farmerclusters.com/
 

wurzell1976

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Somerset
I hope that the problems with payments become less now that the RPA have the administration & we'll be free of the bureaucratic nonsense from Brussels sometime in the future. The RPA will have less scapegoats though they are still woefully underfunded. Putting that aside, if you've already identified your least productive parts of the farm or have them lying fallow post ELS/HLS because you realise why you took those areas out, perhaps it's time to get something other than just greening on those areas.

I'll bet every farm has 3-10% of its area that does nothing but lose money. It may be awkward corners, outlying, shaded, wet, steep or whatever but the productive value is low. Why not get another payment for it? This is just the kind of thing that Gove wants to see. England has dropped from 70% participation in ELS/HLS to around 16% in CS. To reverse the decline in the red list species we need over a third of the country in CS measures.

Don't forget that landscape level projects like the farm clusters will be targeted for funding even more. https://www.farmerclusters.com/
I agree ,so much more needs to be done .The problem with the word "conservation" is that it can affect the vision of some farmers.
 

DRC

Member
As I’ve said on here before. I was very happy with the old HLS, but after ten years it ended , with them moving the goal posts. Trying to reclassify Arable reversion ( £140 acre), to permanent pasture ( £30) and other such issues , which as a tenant farmer I couldn’t afford to do. If they’d just rolled it over,I’d have continued . Now the reversion fields that drain into an SSI , are growing maize and cereals again.
 

D14

Member
I am just in the process of acquiring a new farm.Would it be wise to try for a higher tier scheme or wait to see what comes along post brexit ?

We have a mid teir offer that will pay £200/ha/year on the land it occupies which is all poor cropping land. To implement it would be quite easy for us as we have game covers planted annually so we would just need to change the seeds effectively but I still can't bring myself to sign it. Something is not sitting right which may be down to the stories of people having inspections with out of date maps and inspectors who don't appear to know what they are doing.
 

Brisel

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Midlands
It’s a worry and I’m sure I’ll be having a good rant during the next 5 years when I get a big fine for dubious reasons but since the land is out of production anyway I may as well try to derive some income from it.
 

D14

Member
It’s a worry and I’m sure I’ll be having a good rant during the next 5 years when I get a big fine for dubious reasons but since the land is out of production anyway I may as well try to derive some income from it.

Thats kind of where I am as well in that its unused land really with a bit of capital items for new hedges which we would of done anyway at some point.
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

  • 0 %

    Votes: 79 42.5%
  • Up to 25%

    Votes: 65 34.9%
  • 25-50%

    Votes: 30 16.1%
  • 50-75%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 75-100%

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

    Votes: 6 3.2%

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

  • 1,287
  • 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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