Sustainable Farming Incentive is open for applications June 2022

[Henarar]

0.1 sheep/Ha or 0.1 LSU/Ha ?

Don't you look at sheep as individuals?

 

[B'o'B]

So why is the grassland standard a car crash ?
I thought it was but it seems from what @Janet Hughes Defra just told me its not, it seems you can choose your own way to meet the standards at least that is what I took from her answers.
I know we are not used to that but that is my way of looking at it.
Apart from that is it seen as a car crash because it don't pay enough?

I was using @delilah language from an earlier post.
I will likely to be signing up to both intermediate standards. I am planning to increase the livestock on the farm and the grassland payment will buy the seed to experiment with herbal leys.

 

[B'o'B]

0.1 sheep/Ha or 0.1 LSU/Ha ?

I meant what I wrote.

 

[chipchap]

I suspect many farmers will, like me, think it’s not worth the candle.

 

[B'o'B]

I was using @delilah language from an earlier post.
I will likely to be signing up to both intermediate standards. I am planning to increase the livestock on the farm and the grassland payment will buy the seed to experiment with herbal leys.

Having said that I think the payment rates all round are the real car crash. They have been set so low that they have killed any spark of hope about SFI in a great swath of farmers, many of whom were already skeptical. They needed to be sufficient to encourage these people to risk change.

 

[Two Tone]

Also what happens if you work up land for winter crops, then pisses down for weeks and can not get on?

Happened only couple years ago.
Ended up with 1/2 the farm bare over winter and spring crops.
The outcrop land dont dry well once gets wet, but it had weathered well by spring for a lovely seed bed.

This 70% green cover means an end to leaving ploughed land over winter to let nature break it down.
1 of the best ways to get a good seed bed in the spring on the rough land.
Thinking on, i could get tenner acre in sfi, but then spend more than that having to work it down hard in spring after ploughed in the green cover.
Or plough and leave to weather, no sfi.
More cost on sfi, so sfi for a tenner looses me more income...

On Medium and Heavy land particularly, for any Spring crops we’d plough everything before Christmas to allow it to weather well ahead of drilling. Anything ploughed after Christmas was regarded as very bad farming and would ruin soil structure for many years.

 

[J 1177]

Having said that I think the payment rates all round are the real car crash. They have been set so low that they have killed any spark of hope about SFI in a great swath of farmers, many of whom were already skeptical. They needed to be sufficient to encourage these people to risk change.

Yep iv said this from the start we put up with defra inspections and cross compliance as we do get a decent wedge from the bps but if we are not getting anywhere near that we arent going to bother. The money on offer is insulting, the treasury can find money when it feels like it but doesnt seem bothered about its food supply.

 

[Treg]

at the end of the day our subs are being ended as we know it, to get subs now we have to conform to the standards they think are good for us because we obviously don't no what we are doing! complete control from a government that was going to get rid of the red tape . IM OUT !

Alot don't seem to know what there doing and are damaging soils and the environment, theses standards are aimed at them.
From what I can see those of us that have tried to protect the environment can apply as well , with less changes to the way we farm.
Someone mentioned Newman Turner, my farming hero, if Defra are taking notice of what he wrote then that gives us hope for the future.

 

[J 1177]

On Medium and Heavy land particularly, for any Spring crops we’d plough everything before Christmas to allow it to weather well ahead of drilling. Anything ploughed after Christmas was regarded as very bad farming and would ruin soil structure for many years.

Yep iv only got one field that i dare spring plough the rest is utterly impossible to form into a seedbed if not overwinter ploughed.
If i put a cover crop in over winter il have to either plough it in (which doesnt work on high mag clay) or invest in a direct drill that can sow into a dessicated cover crop. Anybody got a spare 50k i can have?

 

[Vader]

Following your logic, you must be responsible for the car crash that is the grassland standard!

As it happens there is a huge amount of research papers supporting the basic principles of what has been launched for arable and horticultural soils.

Problem is lot of reseach is done to an agenda to prove a point that someone decides is right.

 

[B'o'B]

Problem is lot of reseach is done to an agenda to prove a point that someone decides is right.

That does happen, but I’ve seen (and experienced) enough practical examples to be sure that that isn’t the case with this.
What can be (and often is) a big issue is practically, machinary adaptability, on farm integration with other parts of the business and weather constraints.

 

[Two Tone]

Good afternoon all,

I wanted to let you know that we've opened the Sustainable Farming Incentive for applications today.

You can find a summary of what's available in this initial rollout here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/a-summary-of-the-sfi-in-2022 - we'll be expanding the scheme to cover more actions over the next 3 years.

You can find information on how to apply here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/how-to-...-standards-agreement-on-land-outside-a-common

We've designed the service to be as straightforward and fast as possible for farmers. It includes some new functionality to enable us to simplify the application process for farmers and process your applications faster. We're rolling that out in a careful, controlled way over the next few weeks, so that we can make sure we're able to give everyone the right level of service and support. So from today if you're in CS or ES, or farming on a common, you'll need to contact RPA who will support you to apply. If you're a BPS claimant and don't have any other agreements in place, you can apply directly online through the rural payments service from today (we've already had our first completed application, in fact).

I'll be online to answer any questions about the overall scheme and policy, as ever, but if it's about something specific to your farm or application I'll recommend you contact RPA by phone or email: 03000 200 301 [email protected]

Hi @Janet Hughes Defra ,
Following your instructions ‘So from today if you're in CS or ES, or farming on a common, you'll need to contact RPA who will support you to apply’ , because we are in a CS agreement I telephoned the 03000 200 301 number to get advice on what we should do.

1. Nowhere in the message directing us which button to press does it mention SFI or which button to press to speak to somebody as to how to proceed.
WHICH NUMBER SHOULD I PRESS?

2. Bearing in mind that this SFI was only launched on Thursday 30th June, are the DEFRA staff going to be up to speed to answer these very question?:
A. This farm is already in a CS agreement. How do I apply for the new 2022 SFI scheme?
B. What support can and will you give me to apply?


IMO, those of us already in CS (or ES) are the most likely to want to apply for SFI, because we might be more used to dealing with such schemes and have taken out our worst (marginal) arable land. Not only do we receive CS payments, but that land ALSO still gives us BPS payments on top.
Without the additional BPS payment on top of the CS land, it brings its continued viability into question.
C. How are we going to replace this loss of BPS on it, unless we can do something with it as regards SFI?


I’d far rather speak to somebody rather than email, which can take up to 10 days to get an answer and will usually provoke questions that need another email and another 10 days to answer.
Therefore it is far better to speak to somebody and get it dealt with far quicker.

TIA.

 

[Two Tone]

I do know about the rest of you, but I’ve been taking another look at the Green links as shown in @Janet Hughes Defra post 1 of this thread.

It’s Saturday morning and its raining so I can’t get on with the work I need to do outside. Harvest is virtually upon us and in between getting everything ready for it, I’m helping our Beef tenant get his Haylage baled, wrapped, carted and stacked (He helps me do my hay). I’m a one-man-band on 770 acres, doing all the physical work myself (apart form the hay) plus doing all the running of the business, including the DEFRA form filling work it entails.

Looking at those Green links, I just seem to be going round-and-around in circles going from one Blue sub-section to another. Then I get lost trying to get back to where I was before.
It’s driving me nuts!

Surely there has got to be a better way?

Is it me, or does it not all seem very off-putting to most of us?


Yours truly,
Knackered from Barton.

 

[Goweresque]

I thought it was but it seems from what @Janet Hughes Defra just told me its not, it seems you can choose your own way to meet the standards at least that is what I took from her answers.

The question is not how you get there, but who decides if you have achieved the standard. Yes SFI gives farmers the flexibility to use whatever methods they like to achieve the standard, but whether they have reached the required standard is left completely open to subjective opinion, and guess whose opinion will be more important, yours, or Defra's?

And crucially in all this the farmer seems to bear all the risk. You could use a perfectly sensible method of achieving your aim, but the weather (or pests/diseases) could stymie it. Bad farmer, no SFI for you! The people who have drawn up this scheme do not appear to have an ounce of practical knowledge of what farming entails, and how the best laid plans can be destroyed by unseasonable (or unpredicted) weather. Its entirely a paperwork exercise, obviously constructed by someone who has never left a desk.

 

[Huno]

I am sure the whole SFI scheme will be fit for purpose and ready to go by 2025... In the interim many many changes will be made... many lessons will be learnt and many farms will change hands

 

[Huno]

It is the first time in History that a government department is willing to listen to the views of the industry they are changing.. That will be the view of 200,000 seperate and unique land businesses... so glad i only have 2 businesses to manage and develop

 

[DrWazzock]

It’s state interventionist nonsense.

 

[DrWazzock]

I’ve quite a lot of heavy land so this scheme is a non starter. End of.

 

[Vader]

Alot don't seem to know what there doing and are damaging soils and the environment, theses standards are aimed at them.
From what I can see those of us that have tried to protect the environment can apply as well , with less changes to the way we farm.
Someone mentioned Newman Turner, my farming hero, if Defra are taking notice of what he wrote then that gives us hope for the future.

If yields are staying same or rising, then is the soil damaged..?
Bad damaged soils will remove the bad farmers as wont make a profit as yields drop..

The problem is a lot of land our there is marginal, but the bps means you can grow food on it.
Winter ploughing is only way to get a good spring seed bed.
These sfi dont fit that land.

 

[delilah]

I meant what I wrote.

Then you will have seen my point. There is cropped land on heavily stocked farms, there is cropped land on stock free farms. The arable soils standard has been designed around the need (perceived or real) to use public money to intervene in the latter, whilst offering little for the former.