Sustainable Farming Incentive Deadline Looming

Tubbylew

Member
Location
Herefordshire
How will they know whether you control one side or both when checking your claim?

I was always led to belive a hedge is either your or not, i.e (hereabouts at least) the ditch being the boudary, with the owner of the hedge having access to reasonably maintain said ditch and hedge, I know in practice it doesn't generally work like that, but we had a neighbour treeshear off the top of one of our boundary hedges a year or two back, I was a little miffed but in the interests of neighbourly cooperation I had a word with myself and decided not to mention it, but if it jepordised any scheme money it would have been a big problem.
 

JonL

Member
Location
East Yorks
Clear as mud
Capture.JPG
 

Jon 2166

Member
Arable Farmer
I did spend 20 years working for MAFF and the RPA. This is the same old story. They do not take the right advice and will not listen to ‘real world’ experiences. It is a real shame. The scheme had potential. So many problems need fixing before we have a pilot.
 

ajcc

Member
Livestock Farmer
I ask myself has the SFI scheme been designed to fail?
In the case of a livestock farm with permanent pasture what are they seeking to achieve and how will they measure it?
While I have probably missed something having been demoralised by the level of micro management but if I knew what they were going to measure I could then decide how I manage my farm to deliver.
As happens with much of what the civil service spend their time doing the process is more important than the product. They are conditioned to make the delivery of any target far more complicated than it need be and in this case I am not clear what the target is.
They have made all the right noises regarding consultation?
Maybe @Clive 's Q&A session will have some answers?
So what’s the delay with the Q&A session?? Have I missed seeing the answers particularly any guarantees they have not got hidden agenda to control future cropping management.
 

delilah

Member
It is worth applying to be a pilot, if only to be paid £5k by Defra to tell them what you think the SFI should look like. That is assuming, of course, that you have a view on what the SFI should look like, as opposed to what it shouldn't look like.
 

Highashgrange

Member
Arable Farmer
Is anyone actually going to apply for this as the time to do so is now very short?
I put in an initial application, but on looking through all the details for what will be a relatively small area of land that is not in CS and is grassland only, the amount of information required and admin time taken up for what appears to be a pittance makes me think I will be better off leaving it until others on a larger scale have tested it.

Is it better on an arable system?
Will there be enough people apply initially to make it work? I certainly couldn't consider paying an Agent to do this for me as it would be a cost to the business.

No it just doesn’t stack up. We spent the best part of a day going through it and from an arable point of view, it’s pointless. They’ve got it very wrong in my view and even if they doubled the rates it’s still questionable.
 

topground

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
North Somerset.
Should we have a thread to share experience of being accepted as a pilot?
I have made an application which, if accepted will give me an opportunity to challenge the researchers to show me how the grassland standard will be measured. How many species of grass can be counted in a square metre before the grass heads and how do you maintain avarage grass length in simple system like mine where the cows graze off everything in the autumn and are outwintered and in the spring until the grass catches up when I switch to a grazing rotation. To change that system which works on my ground would cost me more than the scheme pays so I already know I am unlikely to progress beyond the pilot even if accepted.
If the intention of the scheme is to encourage wildlife it would be far more effective to add top end predators to the general licence to give ground nesting and hedgerow birds and small mammals more of a chance of survival.
 

steveR

Member
Mixed Farmer
I did spend 20 years working for MAFF and the RPA. This is the same old story. They do not take the right advice and will not listen to ‘real world’ experiences. It is a real shame. The scheme had potential. So many problems need fixing before we have a pilot.

Too driven by the "stakeholders" who in fact have bugger all stake in the actual reality of making a scheme work, or have a tangible financial interest in the land and management.
 

Sid

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
South Molton
I was always led to belive a hedge is either your or not, i.e (hereabouts at least) the ditch being the boudary, with the owner of the hedge having access to reasonably maintain said ditch and hedge, I know in practice it doesn't generally work like that, but we had a neighbour treeshear off the top of one of our boundary hedges a year or two back, I was a little miffed but in the interests of neighbourly cooperation I had a word with myself and decided not to mention it, but if it jepordised any scheme money it would have been a big problem.
Know of a boundary hedge that one side entered into stewardship, so the "laid" it in a fashion,threw the thinnings on the neighbours and left him with the piles to be burnt and a now non stock proof boundary!
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

  • 0 %

    Votes: 78 42.9%
  • Up to 25%

    Votes: 63 34.6%
  • 25-50%

    Votes: 30 16.5%
  • 50-75%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 75-100%

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

    Votes: 5 2.7%

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

  • 1,286
  • 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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