SFI Pilot questions / thoughts

[delilah]

the soils stuff is contradictory to the latest ea restrictions coming in on organic manures.

I’ve read everything I can find on the scheme and my gripe is that the interrelationships between different standards don’t make any sense to me. The biggest gain imo would be to put water protecting buffers including wild flower mix, which achieves several objectives in one go, but the payment for it is peanuts, in should be one of the highest rewards for its results.

There are two strands running through all of the comments on the SFI:

1) Attempting to micro-manage how we farm our cropped land is fraught with difficulty.

2) The payments on offer for delivering environmental benefit at the margins are not high enough.

There is one obvious way out of this quandry: Let us farm our cropped land how we best see fit, and focus public money on the public goods that can be delivered at the margins.
Or to put it another way, and as I may have said before, all area based payments should go to PP.

You will all get there in the end .

 

[Against_the_grain]

There are two strands running through all of the comments on the SFI:

1) Attempting to micro-manage how we farm our cropped land is fraught with difficulty.

2) The payments on offer for delivering environmental benefit at the margins are not high enough.

There is one obvious way out of this quandry: Let us farm our cropped land how we best see fit, and focus public money on the public goods that can be delivered at the margins.

Kind of like a basic rate of payment for farming the land within a set of guidelines and then adding additional funds for anything above and beyond....where have we heard this before...

I really don't see what is so wrong with the current system. The public are getting a well managed countryside which is well regulated and produces the highest quality food in the world and for the particularly sensitive areas farmers are persuaded to manage these more prescriptively and are compensated for this.
Imo all elms is going to do is reduce the viability/output of the countryside and reduce the amount of quality food produced locally. Not much public good there...

 

[delilah]

Kind of like a basic rate of payment for farming the land within a set of guidelines and then adding additional funds for anything above and beyond....where have we heard this before...

Fundamentally different from BPS. There would be no payment on cropped land.

 

[Against_the_grain]

Fundamentally different from BPS. There would be no payment on cropped land.

But there should be. This is the biggest public good of all that us british farmers can do for the British public. Produce the highest quality food to the highest possible standard at a reasonable price.That is what an agricultural subsidy should be about

 

[delilah]

But there should be. This is the biggest public good of all

For sure, the biggest public good is feeding folks. And any attempt to interfere with the best practice for doing that on individual farms, through prescriptive nationwide measures, will reduce our ability to feed folks.
You would still get public money, but for the fluffy bunny hugging stuff at the margins.

 

[Against_the_grain]

For sure, the biggest public good is feeding folks. And any attempt to interfere with the best practice for doing that on individual farms, through prescriptive nationwide measures, will reduce our ability to feed folks.
You would still get public money, but for the fluffy bunny hugging stuff at the margins.

Edited since but agree

 

[onthehoof]

That's my point, they are but they aren't. For example: a nice rectangular field with an almost completely continuous run of hedge, interspersed with hedgerow trees & unqualifying hedgerow trees
View attachment 976406

This manifests itself as 8 hedges mapped, with 2 unqualifying lengths (less than 20 metres). If hedgerow trees don't qualify as hedges (because the base of the leafy layer is more than 2 metres) then some lengths of hedgerow are too short to qualify. Is it a case of sending in an RLE1 claiming it is a continuous length of hedge including hedgerow trees? The helpline wasn't able to give me any guidance on this.

View attachment 976410

All our fields are like this!

 

[Sid]

It's all starting to sound like the "good old days"
Arable aid payment for conserving soils
Less favoured area payments for conserving the Uplands.

Meanwhile us poor suckers in the middle ground get jaff all of any significance again!

 

[delilah]

Meanwhile us poor suckers in the middle ground get jaff all of any significance again!

You've got PP ? Do some number crunching to see what the £/Ha for PP would be if we ditched area payments on cropped land.

 

[onthehoof]

You've got PP ? Do some number crunching to see what the £/Ha for PP would be if we ditched area payments on cropped land.

Can you enlighten us?

 

[delilah]

Can you enlighten us?

Well like yourself i've only got access to the headline figures that are in the public domain, so we can only second guess at the detail of where Defra see their budget going.
I have recently had the below, which I would imagine is public knowledge. We know how much PP and how much cropped land there is in England, so we could play with the numbers.

Meanwhile, we’ve given a high level indication, which is that over this Parliament (ie between now and 2024) we will spend around 30% of the money allocated to ELM (which is the vast majority of the money to be taken out of direct payments) through SFI. The remainder will go through countryside stewardship, and local and landscape level interventions. We have also said that we’ll keep that under review though.

 

[delilah]

We're just individuals, all we can do is make suggestions via co-design. It's for Defra and our representative bodies to decide whether those suggestions have any merit, and to put numbers to it if they do.

 

[onthehoof]

I sincerely hope that DEFRA can and do make the SFI/ELMS work, but I am afraid that until they understand properly, the concerns of the only real Stakeholders in the game, aka Landowners and Farmers, the schemes will struggle to gain widespread acceptance. Well meaning quangos and NGO's tell us what we must do and how to do it, but lack any experience in the reality that is a farming business.

I have had 25 years of experience of Stewardship schemes, initially all pretty positive. Latterly not so enthusiastic, and I had a complete disinterest in renewing my CSS or going for a new Mid Tier, this Autumn.

Same thoughts on SFI Pilot. Too much pettifogging nonsense for nowhere near enough return I felt initially. The more I have seen and read about the SFI Pilot confirms my concerns.

I feel exactly the same

 

[onthehoof]

Well like yourself i've only got access to the headline figures that are in the public domain, so we can only second guess at the detail of where Defra see their budget going.
I have recently had the below, which I would imagine is public knowledge. We know how much PP and how much cropped land there is in England, so we could play with the numbers.

Meanwhile, we’ve given a high level indication, which is that over this Parliament (ie between now and 2024) we will spend around 30% of the money allocated to ELM (which is the vast majority of the money to be taken out of direct payments) through SFI. The remainder will go through countryside stewardship, and local and landscape level interventions. We have also said that we’ll keep that under review though.

I haven't seen any mention of getting paid for carbon sequestration by having permanent pasture either from Defra or the private sector

 

[Sid]

We're just individuals, all we can do is make suggestions via co-design. It's for Defra and our representative bodies to decide whether those suggestions have any merit, and to put numbers to it if they do.

Not according to Clive, they carry zero weight.

We can make suggestions but DEFRA will make up their own mind.

 

[Clive]

You are selling yourself, and the rest of us, very cheaply.

You may be including your time under sfi input costs but most people don't seem to be.

The amount of extra 'management' required on those areas if farmed as a whole is negligible.
If you put those areas into ELMS/SFI, there are considerable management requirements.
It depends which options you choose but for grazing, this is what is required;

Sustainable Farming Incentive guidance

What farmers need to know to get paid under the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) and how to apply for this funding.

www.gov.uk

This is all simple and obvious to livestock farmers because we are PROFESSIONALS.

Maybe you should spend some time looking through the
Tenant Farming, Subsidies, BPS & Legal Issues
threads and see how simple it is dealing and managing agreements with Natural England.

Referring to your agreement every time you need to manage pasture to see what you can and can't do is time consuming and leads to poor decisions. Both cost.

time goes into growing food just as it would growing natural capital so time / skill is covered by income forgone ……. if payments were anything like high enough

if income was the same it would be an option even

as it stands its not viable- production of food pays better meaning SFI will be for the charitable only !

 

[gone up the hill]

Not according to Clive, they carry zero weight.

We can make suggestions but DEFRA will make up their own mind.

Under Minette Batters all the NFU is/ has been doing the last few months is selling out the industry on ALL fronts be that the new Elms scheme/ BPS/ this Carbon zero bollox/ overseas trade agreements/ Red Tractor and so the long list goes on!

For a Union that calls itself : The National Farmers union to stand up and say that they think that its totally fine and a good thing that at least 30% of farmers will be driven out of the industry when the BPS ends and the new Elms scheme starts is utterly utterly shocking and something is seriously wrong at the top of the NFU..

You can be as pro NFU as you like but when your union is working with the government to drive around 1 in 3 farmers out of the industry then i cannot see how you can back the NFU in any shape or form!

@An Gof

 

[jonnieboy]

I’m still very cautious about taking arable land out of production into any schemes
Just done some work on some land that had been set aside /EFA fallow for a long time, drains were full of roots, self seeded saplings all over and the owner was wanting it back into production before someone decided it was going to have to stay as a mess and devalue the land long term
Planting pretty wild flowers looks good on paper but unless we can actively manage this land then any landowner is going to think twice about entering in any scheme which might devalue the land long term
Also any crop we grow should have a decent margin and the figures quoted so far are not a viable margin over investment especially as these flower mixes seem to be more at risk of failure than OSR due to the weather patterns we seem to be experiencing.

 

[Sid]

Under Minette Batters all the NFU is/ has been doing the last few months is selling out the industry on ALL fronts be that the new Elms scheme/ BPS/ this Carbon zero bollox/ overseas trade agreements/ Red Tractor and so the long list goes on!

For a Union that calls itself : The National Farmers union to stand up and say that they think that its totally fine and a good thing that at least 30% of farmers will be driven out of the industry when the BPS ends and the new Elms scheme starts is utterly utterly shocking and something is seriously wrong at the top of the NFU..

You can be as pro NFU as you like but when your union is working with the government to drive around 1 in 3 farmers out of the industry then i cannot see how you can back the NFU in any shape or form!

@An Gof

Please do quote where the NFU states its good that 30% of farmers will driven out of the industry as I haven't seen that ?

 

[gone up the hill]

Please do quote where the NFU states its good that 30% of farmers will driven out of the industry as I haven't seen that ?

Plenty of articles in the media/ SM ref the above comments!

If the NFU do not think its a good thing that 30% of farmers will be driven out of the industry when Elms comes in then they should have come out and spoke against the pilot trials/ urged NO farmers to take part in them and told the government in NO uncertain terms that the trial payments/ proposed Elms payments and the fact 30% at least of current farmers would be forced out as being totally unacceptable and the NFU would withdraw support for any Sub changes untill the Gov listened to working farmers and made changes...


But did they do that??? .......... aye right!

And untill the NFU get rid of Minette and the other current two top team members aka her lackay's then the sell out of British farming by the NFU will just get worse and worse