New limits to SFI.

[Huno]

No please keep up
These people didn’t know that bps had kept food cheaper
Not complaining stating a fact that can’t be denied

BPS kept Landlords Rich...and SFI is being designed to keep Landlords rich... its nothing to do with food pricing..

 

[Goweresque]

Exactly. Whether by accident or design, that’s how it worked and it worked well. BPS was enough of a payment to reduce the risk of production to comfortable levels but not enough free money to make it sensible to stop production entirely. BPS made production worthwhile from a risk perspective simply because it lessened the risk of going bust if you carried on producing, while sometimes things came good and production added to BPS.
BPS underpinned production but wasn’t a big enough payment to discourage it. You ajways had the chance of making a bit more on top by producing but with BPS as the safety net if markets or weather conditions went wrong.
Looking back it was a damn good thing.

Pretty much spot on. Yes you could have taken the £80/acre and done nothing, but your asset (the land and buildings) would have deteriorated slowly over time. Farmland requires maintenance, and that has to be paid for. BPS alone was not enough to both live on and maintain the fabric of a farm, so the only way it could happen was via a combination of the BPS and earnings from production. 99%+ of farmers continued to produce despite being able to stop and still claim BPS, so the public got its 'public good' via increased levels of production and lower output prices. Allied to the ability to sign up to stewardship schemes that did incentivise people to move unproductive land over to the birds and the bees, the whole system seemed to create a reasonable balance between production and conservation.

Now we have a system that does not incentivise production at all, yet the powers that be are obviously worried about production falling, and are stopping people from ending production. Its totally unbalanced.

 

[Humble Village Farmer]

No please keep up
These people didn’t know that bps had kept food cheaper
Not complaining stating a fact that can’t be denied

Blaming higher consumer prices on the declining bps is like saying my fridge stopped working when you changed that radiator.

 

[Huno]

Pretty much spot on. Yes you could have taken the £80/acre and done nothing, but your asset (the land and buildings) would have deteriorated slowly over time. Farmland requires maintenance, and that has to be paid for. BPS alone was not enough to both live on and maintain the fabric of a farm, so the only way it could happen was via a combination of the BPS and earnings from production. 99%+ of farmers continued to produce despite being able to stop and still claim BPS, so the public got its 'public good' via increased levels of production and lower output prices. Allied to the ability to sign up to stewardship schemes that did incentivise people to move unproductive land over to the birds and the bees, the whole system seemed to create a reasonable balance between production and conservation.

Now we have a system that does not incentivise production at all, yet the powers that be are obviously worried about production falling, and are stopping people from ending production. Its totally unbalanced.

As rents havent reduced.. most tenants are no longer spending anymore money on their landlords estates than is legally required by their tenancies... Looks like agricultural productivity is in nose dive? DEFRA knew this at the beginning but only listened to owners in SFI design.. It is not Cricket but a 5 day match is a long game

 

[getting on]

Fortunately I haven’t applied for more than 25%. TBH they should have reduced the payment rates. They are just too high on arable ground.

Am i reading this right? A farmer saying reduce rates! With respect that is not acceptable, we do not all have grade one or two land. If we are doing a public good we need proper payment.

 

[Huno]

Am i reading this right? A farmer saying reduce rates! With respect that is not acceptable, we do not all have grade one or two land. If we are doing a public good we need proper payment.

The rates for all SFI options were not high enough last week!!!!! Hence so few applicants!!!!

 

[Huno]

800 quid a hectare minus costs and rent equals a minus figure

 

[Huno]

And dont believe the propaganda you read because most of them are PAID to sell the SFI scheme.. good luck to them.. Maths and cashflow however rarely lies...

 

[Huno]

Today Food Production, Stewardship Schemes and SFI are all no profit scenarios.. Milk, Beef and Lamb slight profit for now..
Importing everything... very profitable for food processors.. Change will come and soon

 

[willyorkshire]

The rates for all SFI options were not high enough last week!!!!! Hence so few applicants!!!!

It's not enough for very productive land to take that land out of production. You could argue it's land that doesn't need help. But then helping less productive land with subsidy competes with the highly productive land. One size fits all never has worked well and never will. BUT SFI will help low production land, no doubt. Why risk growing high input costs if the net margin is same or better growing flowers? Oh, but they've now limiting those options to 25%... Hmm. This moveable feast is no good to anyone, inspires no confidence at all.

 

[Aspiring Peasants]

They decide what it is regardless to what I have done with it though

You can get it changed. This is now improved PP

 

[e3120]

800 quid a hectare minus costs and rent equals a minus figure

But 2 lots of 800 in one year isn't so bad. This will surely be a pertinent topic in inspectors' guidance notes, quite rightly IMO, unless prominent TFF lobbyists are successful.

More than 1 way to throttle the job.

• Restrict the scale of new entrants.
• 'Encourage' existing entrants to rethink their plans

Exactly the same has been done with RHI with 'rock solid' agreements being made less attractive with emissions/sustainability/maintenance bolt-ons. Plenty have said sod it.

 

[Huno]

But 2 lots of 800 in one year isn't so bad. This will surely be a pertinent topic in inspectors' guidance notes, quite rightly IMO, unless prominent TFF lobbyists are successful.

More than 1 way to throttle the job.

• Restrict the scale of new entrants.
• 'Encourage' existing entrants to rethink their plans

Exactly the same has been done with RHI with 'rock solid' agreements being made less attractive with emissions/sustainability/maintenance bolt-ons. Plenty have said sod it.

2 lots of 800 in 1 year will be classed as "double funding" just wait for the 2024 SFI small print

 

[livestock 1]

You can get it changed. This is now improved PP

View attachment 1172361

Thanks that was going to be my next question for you

 

[Huno]

2 lots of 800 in 1 year will be classed as "double funding" just wait for the 2024 SFI small print

Spenser was just giving us a "taste" on monday as whats to come... cuts...

 

[Humble Village Farmer]

Couldn't make it up... only a few years after farmers had pointed this issue out to them.

Edit - The sheer incompetence takes my breath away.

What issue?

 

[Clive]

UK food production could cease entirely and the global price of food commodities wouldn’t even flinch

This ^^^

we really need to get over ourselves / self importance !

 

[Clive]

Because it did

evidence please ? UK farm income has never set a cereal price, global markets have and i'm pretty sure there was no BPS in the Ukraine or Canada etc

BPS paid mortgages on land or gave owners dividends on their land

 

[Humble Village Farmer]

bps had kept food cheaper

It didn't. I suggest there is no evidence of that.

 

[Case290]

It kept us farming tho we’d all
Be long gone if it wast there