The three strands to ELMS

delilah

Member
Under current proposals, the total ELMS budget will be split three ways:

1)The Sustainable Farming Initiative. 33%.
Support for individual farmers to deliver ‘public goods’.

2)Local Nature Recovery. 33%.
Collaborative projects between groups of farmers.

3)Landscape Recovery. 33%.
To all intents and purposes: Rewilding.

This budget allocation needs amending now, with the three strands being cut down to two:

1)Sustainable Farming Initiative. 90%.

2)Nature Projects. 10%.

For the vast majority of farmers, the LNR and LR strands to ELMS will be irrelevant. Farmers are already facing one administrative burden with the SFI. Asking them to replicate this commitment of time and energy to a second or even third scheme, and mesh them in with the first, is totally unrealistic. It would be an abuse of public money to only allocate 33% to the SFI and to commit 66% to schemes that will only be of interest to those who least need public money.

There is no need for a ‘Local Nature Recovery’ strand to ELMS. There is nothing that can be achieved by such a scheme, that cannot be achieved via the SFI. If there is seen to be a need for work that crosses boundaries between individual farms, then simply offer that work as options within the SFI and let neighbouring farmers talk to each other about putting in mutually enhancing – but independent – applications. Three farms set up a joint project via LNR. The farmer in the middle then decides to sell up. Is the farm devalued by a legally binding agreement?

All collaborative schemes need coordinating. As soon as you introduce a supporting role into a scheme you are creating an administrative burden that needs paying for. It is absolutely vital that the vast majority of ELMS money finds its way to farmers. Creating ‘clusters’ and suchlike will just mean money being syphoned off for overheads.

The Landscape Recovery pilot is looking for sites between ‘500 and 5,000 connected hectares’. What proportion of England’s farmers will find that relevant to them? If large landholding bodies - private estates, charities, NGO’s – wish to carry out nature-based projects, then great. However, any ‘public money for public goods’ test would find them to be poor value, and they have access to existing funding streams without needing 66% of the ELMS budget.

The money is already being chipped away at. ELMS was being talked about as having an annual budget of £3 billion a year ago. It now seems to be £2.4 billion. In the absence of any cast iron assurances on what the budget will actually be, Defra must at the very least commit that 90% of it will go to those who deliver the most public good: farmers.
 

Jackov Altraids

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Devon
I'm sure I heard Marionette Batters on the Radio yesterday, saying she hoped the rise in food prices would be short lived!!!!....

It would have been prescient to point out that removing £3 Billion from subsidising food production would mean that the UK population are likely to have to pay £3billion extra for their food.

But then, producing food isn't a public good :scratchhead:
 

tepapa

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
North Wales
I was wondering how they were going to replace a per ha payment with environment options.

If for example they plan on paying £400/ha for an option and you put 0.1ha Into the option it's £40. Your going to need a good few £40's to get £30k worth of BPS.
 

DrWazzock

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
I did my bit today. I helped a frog out from under the Cambridge rolls before towing them out of the nettle bed in the stack yard. I thought to myself it can’t be that bad if we’ve got frogs near the beck in the stack yard. I’ll bet they have been using some of the water pools that have formed in the silage heap ground sheet that hasn’t been cleared up for 3 years.
 

Ceri

Member
Vote brexit......! We'll pay u the same if not more, - promise u...... We'll rip up the EU rule book so your free to get on with your job, instead of being shackled by all the pointless ridiculous rules..........
And they all fell for it......
Im absolutely dreading this new scheme/schemes......
 
Under current proposals, the total ELMS budget will be split three ways:

1)The Sustainable Farming Initiative. 33%.
Support for individual farmers to deliver ‘public goods’.

2)Local Nature Recovery. 33%.
Collaborative projects between groups of farmers.

3)Landscape Recovery. 33%.
To all intents and purposes: Rewilding.

This budget allocation needs amending now, with the three strands being cut down to two:

1)Sustainable Farming Initiative. 90%.

2)Nature Projects. 10%.

For the vast majority of farmers, the LNR and LR strands to ELMS will be irrelevant. Farmers are already facing one administrative burden with the SFI. Asking them to replicate this commitment of time and energy to a second or even third scheme, and mesh them in with the first, is totally unrealistic. It would be an abuse of public money to only allocate 33% to the SFI and to commit 66% to schemes that will only be of interest to those who least need public money.

There is no need for a ‘Local Nature Recovery’ strand to ELMS. There is nothing that can be achieved by such a scheme, that cannot be achieved via the SFI. If there is seen to be a need for work that crosses boundaries between individual farms, then simply offer that work as options within the SFI and let neighbouring farmers talk to each other about putting in mutually enhancing – but independent – applications. Three farms set up a joint project via LNR. The farmer in the middle then decides to sell up. Is the farm devalued by a legally binding agreement?

All collaborative schemes need coordinating. As soon as you introduce a supporting role into a scheme you are creating an administrative burden that needs paying for. It is absolutely vital that the vast majority of ELMS money finds its way to farmers. Creating ‘clusters’ and suchlike will just mean money being syphoned off for overheads.

The Landscape Recovery pilot is looking for sites between ‘500 and 5,000 connected hectares’. What proportion of England’s farmers will find that relevant to them? If large landholding bodies - private estates, charities, NGO’s – wish to carry out nature-based projects, then great. However, any ‘public money for public goods’ test would find them to be poor value, and they have access to existing funding streams without needing 66% of the ELMS budget.

The money is already being chipped away at. ELMS was being talked about as having an annual budget of £3 billion a year ago. It now seems to be £2.4 billion. In the absence of any cast iron assurances on what the budget will actually be, Defra must at the very least commit that 90% of it will go to those who deliver the most public good: farmers.

Some great points there @delilah. I'm sure you've already shared with @Janet Hughes Defra, so it would be great to hear her thoughts about this proposed restructure.
 

andybk

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Mendips Somerset
The best we could do would be to turn our backs to it. Leave defra/rpa with no tools. It is, after all ,not going to anywhere near replace bps financially. Prices are good so push for production.
should attach a caveat to that : at the moment , we are in a weird time of post brexit and post covid and a few weather extremes , by the time this all settles down and payments are made , we are back in the real world of larry goodman and the supermarkets , To give the message to DEFRA we are ok , could be a disaster .Be better to push the weather extremes point and say look this is what could happen here at some point, ignore us at your peril
 

beardface

Member
Location
East Yorkshire
I wouldn't worry about any of it. There's a global push to reduce agricultural output to stem climate change and habitat loss. This is at a time when climate change and diseases are making it increasingly hard to maintain consistent global yields of crops and prime stock.

By the time BPS is phased out there'll be riots at the supermarkets. We'll be too busy paying security firms to protect our crops and stock to worry about government payments.
 

Old Tup

Member
Under current proposals, the total ELMS budget will be split three ways:

1)The Sustainable Farming Initiative. 33%.
Support for individual farmers to deliver ‘public goods’.

2)Local Nature Recovery. 33%.
Collaborative projects between groups of farmers.

3)Landscape Recovery. 33%.
To all intents and purposes: Rewilding.

This budget allocation needs amending now, with the three strands being cut down to two:

1)Sustainable Farming Initiative. 90%.

2)Nature Projects. 10%.

For the vast majority of farmers, the LNR and LR strands to ELMS will be irrelevant. Farmers are already facing one administrative burden with the SFI. Asking them to replicate this commitment of time and energy to a second or even third scheme, and mesh them in with the first, is totally unrealistic. It would be an abuse of public money to only allocate 33% to the SFI and to commit 66% to schemes that will only be of interest to those who least need public money.

There is no need for a ‘Local Nature Recovery’ strand to ELMS. There is nothing that can be achieved by such a scheme, that cannot be achieved via the SFI. If there is seen to be a need for work that crosses boundaries between individual farms, then simply offer that work as options within the SFI and let neighbouring farmers talk to each other about putting in mutually enhancing – but independent – applications. Three farms set up a joint project via LNR. The farmer in the middle then decides to sell up. Is the farm devalued by a legally binding agreement?

All collaborative schemes need coordinating. As soon as you introduce a supporting role into a scheme you are creating an administrative burden that needs paying for. It is absolutely vital that the vast majority of ELMS money finds its way to farmers. Creating ‘clusters’ and suchlike will just mean money being syphoned off for overheads.

The Landscape Recovery pilot is looking for sites between ‘500 and 5,000 connected hectares’. What proportion of England’s farmers will find that relevant to them? If large landholding bodies - private estates, charities, NGO’s – wish to carry out nature-based projects, then great. However, any ‘public money for public goods’ test would find them to be poor value, and they have access to existing funding streams without needing 66% of the ELMS budget.

The money is already being chipped away at. ELMS was being talked about as having an annual budget of £3 billion a year ago. It now seems to be £2.4 billion. In the absence of any cast iron assurances on what the budget will actually be, Defra must at the very least commit that 90% of it will go to those who deliver the most public good: farmers.
This budget allocation needs amending now, with the three strands being cut down to two:

1)Sustainable Farming Initiative. 90%.

2)Nature Projects. 10%.

I admire your optimism….
 

Jimdog1

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Devon
I wouldn't worry about any of it. There's a global push to reduce agricultural output to stem climate change and habitat loss. This is at a time when climate change and diseases are making it increasingly hard to maintain consistent global yields of crops and prime stock.

By the time BPS is phased out there'll be riots at the supermarkets. We'll be too busy paying security firms to protect our crops and stock to worry about government payments.
This^^. I think the major flaw in 'just in time ' logistics has just been exposed and it has shown that perhaps this is not the time of plentiful food that we have been led to believe. Personally, I think food security just moved up the agenda......
 

teslacoils

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
Strand 1) romantic dinner and flowers
Strand 2) few glasses of fizz, and invite up to hers.
Strand 3) wake up next day, remembering very little; bumhole sore; "she" has suspicious quantity of stubble; and it's a fair taxi fare home where you cry into your cornflakes.

I'd say that was a decent ELMs analogy if the current rates are correct, and it's administered in the same way as previous.
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

  • 0 %

    Votes: 79 42.2%
  • Up to 25%

    Votes: 65 34.8%
  • 25-50%

    Votes: 30 16.0%
  • 50-75%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 75-100%

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

    Votes: 7 3.7%

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

  • 1,289
  • 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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