Sustainable farming incentive details published today 2 December 2021

[bobk]

You can find this information here in the section on standards:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/sustainable-farming-incentive-how-the-scheme-will-work-in-2022

Link invalid Janet

 

[Janet Hughes Defra]

And who is going to carry out these inspections on every farm, Red Tractor?

We won’t be using Red Tractor to perform them.

In the SFI document we explain that each SFI farmer will submit an annual declaration to confirm progress in delivering the agreement.

This primarily self-assessment approach will be backed up by site visit checks on a proportion of agreements each year.

We’ll also look to increase our use of remote monitoring (such as satellites) to increase efficiency and ease for farmers and Defra.

 

[Janet Hughes Defra]

Dont know if anyone has asked this but going forward is it going to be based on entitlements ? half of what i farm , the sfp is claimed by owners under their entitlements , now some of those owners arnt working farmers so presume they will take the golden handshake , what happens to the land they farm regard SFI assuming i still farm it ?

In early rollout, SFI is indirectly linked to entitlements because we’re basing eligibility on being eligible for BPS (which requires a farmer to have at least 5 hectares and 5 or more entitlements).

In later years, when we’re ready to take on new customers not already registered for BPS, we will remove the BPS eligibility requirement, so a wider range of farmers will become eligible for SFI. Among other things this means the indirect link to entitlements will cease to exist for SFI. We do not expect to do this before 2024.

 

[Janet Hughes Defra]

Link invalid Janet

Sorry about that - did a typo, have edited, it should work now

 

[holwellcourtfarm]

In early rollout, SFI is indirectly linked to entitlements because we’re basing eligibility on being eligible for BPS (which requires a farmer to have at least 5 hectares and 5 or more entitlements).

In later years, when we’re ready to take on new customers not already registered for BPS, we will remove the BPS eligibility requirement, so a wider range of farmers will become eligible for SFI. Among other things this means the indirect link to entitlements will cease to exist for SFI. We do not expect to do this before 2024.

That has economic implications. Entitlements are still being traded currently. From what you’ve posted they will cease to have any value from 2024 which must impact their trading value from today…..

 

[Janet Hughes Defra]

Doesn't say how much organic matter? One wheel barrow load per acre?

We’ll explain this in guidance we’ll issue in the new year. We don’t intend to be overly prescriptive – to some extent it will depend on what you’ve found out from your soil organic matter testing.

 

[Humble Village Farmer]

@Janet Hughes Defra, Im considering an area of agroforestry. Is this going to be in later ambitions and if I start now will I be worse off than waiting for the rules to be published? Also, how prescriptive will it be with regard to tree spacing, avenue width and choice of species please?

I don't think I had a reply to this @Janet Hughes Defra.

 

[DaveGrohl]

And really livestock are essential to our operation and without them our OM levels would undoubtedly be lower unless we took land out of production for “regeneration.”
Constant negativity from many sources over livestock has I hope temporarily put my brother off keeping them. And that’s a real loss and shame in my view. That’s the effect of policy on the ground so it needs thinking about carefully.
I’ll leave it at that.

It's almost as if hundreds of years of mixed farming as practised by, well, everyone, might've been the right way to farm after all. But then we've all those experts to thank for taking us down a different road these recent few decades. And yet we're still in the hands of experts who are NOW saying we need to look after our soils. Welcome to the modern world where hundreds of years of human knowledge gets binned then has to be fished out again once we've chucked a load of stinking fish on top of it.

 

[Janet Hughes Defra]

Morning Janet, could you please confirm that it will be written in the terms & conditions of any ELMS agreement that for the full term of any agreement DEFRA will alone police & monitor the scheme, you would understand that it would put a slightly different complexion on the scheme if we were to discover half way through that the government had transferred policing of the agreement to a commercial company.

The Rural Payments Agency will deliver the SFI scheme, including monitoring arrangements. There are no plans at all to outsource any of that to private companies.

 

[Janet Hughes Defra]

Hi Janet,
there was some difference over the weekend in how people interpreted your 'per hectare not per parcel' sampling requirement. Can you confirm if that means one sample for each hectare entered in the scheme, or one sample for each 5ha (for example) block, etc?

Some fields/land parcels in the Eastern Counties might be 40ha or more, whereas in more pastoral areas they could be less than 0.5ha.

To clarify, the aim is to collect a good spread of samples – so you get a good indication of levels of soil organic matter across the land you’ve entered into the scheme.

When I said the samples would be ‘per hectare, not per field’, I did not mean to imply that we’d require ‘one sample per hectare’. We’re trying to move away from this kind of prescriptive approach.

I was saying that the number of samples would depend on the size of the area of land being sampled. In other words, on a small field you’d need fewer samples, and on a large field you’d need more samples.

We’ll explain more about how to do this in guidance we’ll issue next year.

 

[neilo]

To clarify, the aim is to collect a good spread of samples – so you get a good indication of levels of soil organic matter across the land you’ve entered into the scheme.

When I said the samples would be ‘per hectare, not per field’, I did not mean to imply that we’d require ‘one sample per hectare’. We’re trying to move away from this kind of prescriptive approach.

I was saying that the number of samples would depend on the size of the area of land being sampled. In other words, on a small field you’d need fewer samples, and on a large field you’d need more samples.

We’ll explain more about how to do this in guidance we’ll issue next year.

Thank you. That does seem a logical approach.

 

[stroller]

Does anyone forsee the cost of soil organic matter sampling going up ?

Probably £40/ ha

 

[Courier]

Probably £40/ ha

Apparently you can do it yourself - just need the methodolygy and an understanding other half, is this not correct ? @Janet Hughes Defra

 

[neilo]

It's almost as if hundreds of years of mixed farming as practised by, well, everyone, might've been the right way to farm after all. But then we've all those experts to thank for taking us down a different road these recent few decades. And yet we're still in the hands of experts who are NOW saying we need to look after our soils. Welcome to the modern world where hundreds of years of human knowledge gets binned then has to be fished out again once we've chucked a load of stinking fish on top of it.

Mixed farming and sensible, diverse rotations have always been the most sustainable way to farm. Nothing’s changed about that.

It wasn’t ‘experts’ that led to the widespread specialisation we see today, but economics, and (I would suggest mostly) a lack of willingness to do the physical work involved.

 

[Vader]

I am afraid that this prescription is one that requires possible variable interpretations by an Inspector. No thanks..

That is problem with a lot of this stuff.
Interpretation...
1 of my past fines was the inspector decided I had to many thistles in my margin and was not managing them. Should be spot spraying them.
I was organic at the time....
and this was April/may.
I said old saying, cut in june come back soon, cut in july sure to die.
I said would all be topped to stop new seed at right time.
They decided no, and fined me.
Appeal agreed with me and over turned it.

Anything that does not have measurable outcome you can be screwed over.

 

[Dave645]

Part of the reason a cap on payments was not enacted was the likelihood of individual businesses being split to maximise payments. History suggested some farmers would be duplictious and reorganise their business structure to maximise payment. So you may grumble but sometimes farmers are own worst enemie.

to an extent we have seen it anyway wi rise of contract farming.

i am sure we could have come up with some rules, now we can now set rules any rules we like now we are outside of the EU, to stop fake split ups. The old system and it’s rules had to please 27 counties now we only have to make it work for the UK.

the reality is while stopping cheats would be an ongoing problem the reality is if it only worked with 90% of farmers it would still have been a vast improvement and those 10% would be taken to task with new rules over time.

Fake fragmenting of big business Can be made very difficult with a few rules, and if they don’t work then add more to block the fake breakups.
The reality is no one tried, and what we have now will weaken farming if it’s not done correctly.
We need land in production we need food production increases over the next 20-30 years if we don’t see a big world population drop then we will need far more food than we produce now, so anything that reduces an already dwindling farming industry and reduces its ability to manage the land as actual agricultural land will not be a good thing long term.
I actually worry most about the animal sector, they seem to be under failure pressure from fake climate claims and the vegan brigade, and now with these new schemes, once animal populations drop bringing them back is no over night job neither is creating new farmers to farm them once they are gone, while I am arable, that doesn’t say that I am blind to the mistakes threatening my livestock brothers.

All these are reasons to allow smaller farmers to thrive and that also encourages more small farmers to start up especially in the livestock industry where slow scale up of farms is more possible unlike arable at this time.

With bit of encouragement from govermant new entrants using what is currently farmed by big growers to setup new farms for new entrants with incentives to either rent, tenant blocks out, sell small blocks, with the ability for the buyer to rent or tenant blocks to go with the sold block.
A lot of big farms include rented land even if only that was dropped by the big farmers it would change the industry.

 

[Vader]

That's a really fundamental point.

The evidence is growing just how damaging intense cultivation, as required for root crop and veg establishment, can be to soil biology. However, as you rightly say, the country needs a supply of these foods so they have to be grown somewhere. The best we can do is to try to minimise the impact of what we do.

I can recall fields looking like the Somme after we harvested sugar beet and getting forage maize off caused horrific damage some years.

Some folk are successfully direct drilling forage maize into retained ground cover but beet and veg crops just wouldn't compete.

Maybe growing them only as a single year in a long rotation is the best we can do? They are never going to fit into an SFI soils standard imho though.

DEFRA have made it clear that food supply security has nothing to do with ELMS. That could be its downfall in the end as it forces a choice between farming for the environment or for food production.

A lot depends on the soil type.
Local to us had spuds in a big field other year. With the wet weather it looked wrecked when they were done.
Had a tractor towing harvester at times.
Water filled ruts, right mess.

They ploughed it early spring and looked a cracking spring barley crop.
Their WW this time looks good as well.
would never know it looked like a swamp couple years ago. Looks way better than ours!! They got nice soils, we got Outcrop...

 

[stroller]

I had an inspection under the old scheme with 2m margins against watercourses, I measured them on the map, then used the defra online calculator when it first came out, both the same. The inspector came with a measing wheel and decided I was 40% short, apparently asking him for the calibration certificate for his wheel and asking him to test measure in the field over rough ground is not the thing to do. Luckily I just had enough points with hedges and a few field corners to scrape through, but it makes me reluctant to enter any more of their schemes

 

[DaveGrohl]

Mixed farming and sensible, diverse rotations have always been the most sustainable way to farm. Nothing’s changed about that.

It wasn’t ‘experts’ that led to the widespread specialisation we see today, but economics, and (I would suggest mostly) a lack of willingness to do the physical work involved.

So experts didn't come up with pesticides then? Or thusly encouraging the widespread adoption of continuous moncropping?

Well, currently we have "experts" advising everyone to give up meat because their expertise is lacking. Maybe I should've phrased it experts who are unfamiliar with thinking things through, or not being able to see the wood for the trees.

 

[neilo]

So experts didn't come up with pesticides then? Or thusly encouraging the widespread adoption of continuous moncropping?

Well, currently we have "experts" advising everyone to give up meat because their expertise is lacking. Maybe I should've phrased it experts who are unfamiliar with thinking things through, or not being able to see the wood for the trees.

Better pesticides allowed you to get away with continuous mono cropping for a while. It was never a sustainable system.