The Environment Food and Rural Affairs (EFRA) Committee is to
examine the government’s progress rolling out its new farm
payment system - the Environmental Land Management Scheme (ELMS)
- which will replace payments made under the EU’s Common
Agricultural Policy.
ELMS will pay farmers and other landowners for delivering a range
of ‘public goods’ including improved environment, better climate
outcomes and improved animal health & welfare. The Government
launched the strand of the policy aimed at farmers, the
Sustainable Farming Initiative (SFI), in June 2022, with other
schemes due to be piloted later this year.
The new inquiry – called Environmental Land
Management Scheme: Progress Update – will look at:
· how the rollout of the ELMS
scheme is going, and whether the Government has listened to
feedback from the pilot schemes;
· how well the Department for
Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) is communicating the
changes to farmers and other affected groups; and
· whether the ELMS aims and
timescales need to change to respond to pressures facing farming
such as increased fuel and fertiliser costs, as well as changing
food prices.
The committee has looked at the government’s plans for ELMS
before and published a report on it in October 2021, Environmental Land Management
and the agricultural transition.
The Chair of the EFRA Committee, Sir said:
“ELMS is the biggest change to agricultural and environmental
policy for years and farmers are understandably concerned about
what will replace the subsidies that many have come to rely
on.
“As we are now starting to see the detail of the Government’s
plans, we want to hear farmers and landowners’ views on the new
system and how well they think DEFRA’s rollout is
going.
“Our food producers are facing a lot of challenges right now.
So my committee wants to explore whether DEFRA is right to be
sticking to the planned seven year transition to the new payments
system. We’ll look into whether it may need to adapt its plans to
respond to increased costs for feed, fuel and energy, as well as
to rising food prices – all of which might make some farmers less
keen to enter these schemes”.
Terms of Reference
The Terms of Reference for the forthcoming committee inquiry
are:
1. What progress has the ELMS
programme made since January 2022 (when the government responded
to the first committee report on ELMS)?
2. What have farmers’ experiences
been of applying to the SFI since its launch on 30 June 2022? How
effectively has the scheme used the feedback from the SFI pilot?
What are the timescales for launching additional standards under
the SFI?
3. Is the government on track to
get 70% of farmers, covering at least 70% of farmland, to take up
SFI agreements? How have recent changes in global food prices
impacted on the attractiveness of the financial incentives in the
schemes?
4. Is ELMS on track to start
piloting the Local Nature Recovery and Landscape Recovery schemes
in 2022?
5. How effectively is the
Government communicating and engaging with farmers and other
landowner groups about the progress of ELMS?
6. Should the Government change the
focus on the ELMS scheme and/or the timescales for implementation
given the current pressures on farmers and UK food
security?
How to get involved
Everyone is welcome to submit their views in writing here. For general
information on how to submit written information to us, and how
we then use that information, please see here.
The closing date for submission of written evidence is
2359 HRS on Sunday 21 August.
The Committee will also hold hearings with experts and
stakeholders at oral evidence sessions, which will be announced
nearer the time.
