LIVE - DEFRA SFI Janet Hughes “ask me anything” 19:00-20:00 20th September (Today)

[Janet Hughes Defra]

Hello, I’m Janet Hughes. I’m the Programme Director for the Future Farming and Countryside Programme in Defra – the programme that’s phasing out the Common Agricultural Policy and introducing new schemes and services for farmers.



Today (20 September) between 7pm-8pm, I and some of my colleagues will be answering your questions about our work including the Sustainable Farming Incentive, Farming in Protected Landscapes, and our test and trials.



We’ll try to answer at least 15 of your top voted questions, so please vote on the questions you’d most like me to answer.



You can read more about our Future Farming policy on our blog.



I’ve answered some of your questions previously: you can watch the videos on the Farm TV or Defra’s YouTube (part 1 and part 2 of the videos). I’m happy to answer any follow-up questions about that, as well as other questions you might have.



Housekeeping:

• We’ll do our best to answer as many questions as we can, in the order in which you’ve voted on them
• If there are top voted questions we can’t answer immediately for whatever reason, we’ll do our best to come back with answers to them in the next few days
• If this works for you as a format, we’ll do it again, so let us know what you think!

Looking forward to seeing you at 7pm!

 

[DRC]

No we weren't surprised - we were aiming to attract up to 1,000 people to take part in the pilot, in the event more than 2,000 expressed an interest. We don't need more than 1,000 to learn what we need to learn at this stage through the pilot.

We did make a planning assumption internally in case we had more than that, so that we would be operationally in case that happened, but that was never our target.

On payment rates, we are reviewing all rates because they've not been updated since 2013 and are out of date - we will publish updated rates before the end of the year for existing schemes and SFI.

If we didn't get enough people in the full scheme, we'd first look to understand why not and adjust the scheme. That's why we're taking a test and learn approach, gradually rolling out the scheme over time so we can learn and adjust as we go.

Finally - the deadline for pilot applications has been extended to 30 Sept in response to feedback from farmers who needed more time, so if you expressed an interest and haven't yet applied there is still time!

Why do you need to learn so much, when we've had years of stewardship . Indeed we were in HLS for 10 years, with environmentalists coming to do various studies . Where is all the data from this.
To be honest Janet, I think I will be retired by the time you have actually got a working scheme up and running .
You have know this was coming, so why is it taking so long . What will fill the gap between BPS going any Elms getting started.

 

[Janet Hughes Defra]

Is it correct that if I were to enter into a hedgerow agreement under SFI, say the advanced level, that I would obliged to continue with that regime indefinitely, even if I withdrew from SFI in, say 4 years time?

No there would be no ongoing requirement about how to manage the hedgerow beyond the duration and requirements of your agreement

 

[Andy26]

Firstly thank you @JanetHughesDefra for engaging directly, very refreshing approach.

I have an active Mid tier wildlife offer, I've only implemented this on arable land with rotational options as like many, I do not have the confidence that entering into certain options may make land unable to return to productive farmland in perpetuity.

In short the EIA process is harming much environmental good that could be done.

Can you look into the implementation of the EIA because the law on the statue book seems to of been interpreted differently by Natural England, to how it reads in law.

 

[Wombat]

Couple of questions for me.

Why are there stipulations that to get to higher levels you must carry certain options such as ditch management. This penalises those with lots of ditches which can lead to large yield loss of more than the payment if not maintained over those in areas with free draining soils with no ditches

Are the agreements single year or multi year? If they are multi year can a line be drawn at the end of each year so there isn’t a penalised claw back for a none farmer caused mistake.

 

[johnpeels]

I signed up for the SFI farmer consultation, but when it came to the time, found that I was excluded because I am already in an environmental scheme. So is Defra only interested in the opinions of those that are thus far uninterested in environmental matters?

 

[Martin Holden]

Q = How many of you have genuine, hands-on agricultural knowledge / experience?

That’s a good profound question. To be in a position to make life changing policy decisions you have to have a deep understanding of your subject.

 

[Mixedupfarmer]

We'll pay for a mixture of buffer and other types of strips up to 10m wide through the SFI standards. We do think these are really important and valuable as you say.

We are currently reviewing all payment rates and plan to publish updated rates for existing schemes and SFI before the end of the year.

We're all ears about whether the standards work for you - we'll learn a lot through the pilot about this, and welcome other feedback too

Will reviewed payment rates be applied to existing schemes for the remainder of their duration, as well as new schemes including the SFI? Sadly our mid tier agreement ends at the end of the year, and all environmental options will be ploughed out as the payment rates offered for a new scheme were too low (same as 6 years ago) considering the BPS reductions, and increase in costs. Why have rates not been reviewed before?

 

[topground]

lots of question, limited time, I’m sure Janet and her team will do their best to answer as many as they can

can we try stick to questions as well please

Is there any reason why all of the questions asked through this thread could not be answered over the next couple off days rather than trying to cover a everything in an hour?

 

[holwellcourtfarm]

Thank you for your time Janet.

 

[Clive]

OK going to close this thread for now as I’m sure Janet doesn’t want to be here until midnight !

thank you to all that contributed and thank to Janet and her team for making this possible

hopefully it’s something we can do more of in the future ……….

unanswered questions will be addressed soon as they can I’m told over coming days

 

[Grass And Grain]

Vegetable growers don't direct drill, but instead plough their land and intensively cultivate.

By incentivising direct drilling, are you disincentivising vegetable growing and production of our 5-a-day?

Direct drillers tend to favour rotationally grown spring crops such as malting barley (grass weed control). Is the SFI going to unintentionally incentivise alcohol production and the production of CO2 as a product of the fermentation process?

 

[Still Farming]

Would we better off sticking with food production, rather than trying to be wildlife champions, whilst importing food from countries with questionable practices such as leveling rain forests to produce crops/ meat that could be produced in the UK ?

And allegedly using pesticides we banned here off the approved lists decades ago?

 

[HatsOff]

What does DEFRA see as the strategic direction to the countryside?

The new scheme has no mention on food production and has rates of SFI are less than the cost of the work (see:£49 to manage a hectare of woodland! Or £4/m of fence), so doesn't appear to value the environmental work either. This is especially true when the costs of administration of the new scheme are added in.

Edit - this has been partly answered already. Apparently they see the new scheme as 'investing' in the environment! How is it 'investing' when the money you put in is less than the cost of the materials, let alone the labour?

Follow up Q - I presume DEFRA is aware that a huge tranche of landowners are going to said no thanks and go their own way?

 

[steveR]

We don't think it's about not producing food and doing wildlife instead - for a lot of farms it will be about producing food in a more sustainable way.

I have long said sustainable also means profitable.... we can do both, IF we can get a fair price at the end of the day. Will the Govt free trade ethos allow this to happen.... I have my doubts, sadly.

SFI needs to be more joined up and work at retailer/producer levels too. Support local abattoirs to open and/or stay in business, for instance

 

[StormInATeaCup]

Why do we still have absolutely no details of Local Nature Recovery when it will make up a large portion of the BPS budget? It was clear from the Landscape Recovery information scheme that this part of ELMs would be unavailable for the vast majority of farmers. All we have currently been given is SFI with very low income foregone payment rates against the devastating backdrop of huge BPS reductions in the next 3 years

 

[steveR]

lots of question, limited time, I’m sure Janet and her team will do their best to answer as many as they can

can we try stick to questions as well please

Yes Boss

 

[bobk]

Good that Janet came on so fair play to her .

Unlike the weasels at NFU headquarters

 

[flinty]

Thanks for the reference to the Severn Trent Water scheme - we'll have a look and see what we can learn from how they've done it.

I agree we need to make the new schemes as straightforward as possible for people and we're working to do that, in partnership with farmers in our tests and trials and the pilot.

We have a waterbody buffering standard in the pilot, and we've designed it to be simple and straightforward to follow. We'd welcome any feedback on that.

1) I Like the idea of margins but have no standing water, will I still be included? Also we have a big problem with uninvited visitors who are likely to use them for dog walking. we have skylarks and would prefer they are left in peace? Would I be able to stop the margins before gateways?
2) Wildlife and access don't mix well, unless you are taking money off the visitors so they are the priority. If your schemes involve increased access we won't join. If you are serious about increasing access, remove our liability. All shop car parks are at the customers risk, why should we be liable when we have no choice? Office car parks etc should be accessible out of hours to spread the load, good places to cycle and skateboard.

 

[Chris F]

Yes - to echo others - thanks @JanetHughesDefra and team for your time tonight, although we had limited time, the openness is very much appreciated.

 

[Janet Hughes Defra]

Hello, I’m Janet Hughes. I’m the Programme Director for the Future Farming and Countryside Programme in Defra – the programme that’s phasing out the Common Agricultural Policy and introducing new schemes and services for farmers.



Today (20 September) between 7pm-8pm, I and some of my colleagues will be answering your questions about our work including the Sustainable Farming Incentive, Farming in Protected Landscapes, and our test and trials.



We’ll try to answer at least 15 of your top voted questions, so please vote on the questions you’d most like me to answer.



You can read more about our Future Farming policy on our blog.



I’ve answered some of your questions previously: you can watch the videos on the Farm TV or Defra’s YouTube (part 1 and part 2 of the videos). I’m happy to answer any follow-up questions about that, as well as other questions you might have.



Housekeeping:

• We’ll do our best to answer as many questions as we can, in the order in which you’ve voted on them
• If there are top voted questions we can’t answer immediately for whatever reason, we’ll do our best to come back with answers to them in the next few days
• If this works for you as a format, we’ll do it again, so let us know what you think!

Looking forward to seeing you at 7pm!

I'm just going through to see which questions we didn't get time to address the other day and answering them. I hope that's helpful and look forward to picking up further questions next time.