- More than £168m to drive innovation, improve productivity and
support animal health and welfare through greener equipment,
robotics and automation.
- Funding will sit alongside Environmental Land Management
schemes to support sustainable food production while protecting
our natural environment
- Farming Minister announces plans for funding for smaller
abattoirs, helping to improve productivity and animal health and
welfare through reduced journey times to slaughter.
More than £168 million in grants will be available to farmers
this year to drive innovation, support food production, improve
animal health and welfare and protect the environment.
Speaking at the National Farmers’ Union conference in Birmingham,
Farming Minister will set out how the grants
will drive the development of new technology and innovative ways
of farming, with a focus on practical solutions that advance food
productivity and deliver significant environmental and animal
welfare benefits.
These could include robotic technology to support with
harvesting, handling equipment and cow mattresses to help prevent
lameness in dairy cattle, sensors on tractors to measure the
levels of nutrients in soils, or improvements to slurry storage -
to further the efforts of farmers aiming to minimise their
fertiliser use, and in turn reduce water and air
pollution.
The grants, delivered through the Farming Innovation
Programme (FIP) and Farming Investment
Fund(FIF), will sit alongside the Environmental Land
Management schemes which pay farmers for a diverse range
of actions such as managing hedgerows for wildlife, planting
nectar-rich wildflowers and managing crop pests without the use
of insecticides.
Every year animal sickness, such as lameness in cattle, leads to
the loss of thousands of livestock which in turn decreases
productivity and contributes to farm emissions. New dedicated
funding for annual vet-led health and welfare checks for
livestock and money to support farmers implement improvements
following these visits has been announced through the Animal Health and
Welfare Pathway. Farmers interested in the vet visit can
now register their
interest.
Taken together, these schemes and grants will help to deliver
long-term sustainable food production and support farmers to halt
and reverse the decline of nature as set out in the Environmental
Improvement Plan.
Speaking at the NFU conference, Farming Minister said:
“The role farmers play in putting food on our tables as well as
looking after our countryside is crucial. We know that
sustainable food production depends on a healthy environment, the
two go hand in hand.
“Helping farms invest in new technology as well as bringing in
nature-friendly schemes will support the future of
farming.”
Today’s funding forms part of the government’s commitment to
spend around £600 million on grants and other support for farmers
to invest in productivity, animal health and welfare, innovation,
research and development over three years, funded out of the £2.4
billion annual farming budget which is being maintained at its
current level for the rest of this Parliament.
It follows a series of significant announcements by the
government on future farming policy in England.
Since the start of the year, the government has set out detailed plans
for the nation’s farming sector,supporting farmers to be
profitable and resilient as they produce food sustainably while
improving animal health and welfare and the environment upon
which farming depends. This included accelerating the rollout of
the Sustainable Farming Incentive, with six new standards for
2023, and setting out detail on what farmers will be paid to
deliver through our enhanced Countryside Stewardship
scheme.
The government has increased payments to farmers for protecting
and enhancing nature and delivering sustainable food production
through both a Sustainable Farming Incentive Management Payment
worth up to £1,000 per year per farm and increased payment rates
through Countryside Stewardship.
More than 2,000 farmers now have live agreements as part of the
Sustainable Farming Incentive, while more than 32,000 farmers are
signed up to Countryside Stewardship – a 94% increase since
2020.
Support for smaller abattoirs
The Government has also confirmed it plans to introduce funding
to promote enhanced productivity, innovation and improved animal
health and welfare in smaller abattoirs.
Speaking at the NFU conference, Farming Minister
said:
“If farming is to flourish then we need to get the fundamentals
right - abattoirs are key to the food supply chain and there is
clearly a need to support smaller providers in this
area.
“The availability of funding will help abattoirs to invest in new
technology and improve productivity and animal health and
welfare, allowing our agriculture sector to get its high-quality
produce to market.”
There has been a 20% reduction in the number of low-capacity
abattoirs in the last decade. A network of smaller abattoirs
distributed around the country is crucial to supporting the rural
economy, enabling farmers to sell their own meat in farm shops
and maintaining good animal health and welfare through reduced
journey times to slaughter.
At a recent roundtable, the minister met with the sector and
discussed the issues they are facing. The new funding, to be
announced in full later this year, will help those abattoirs to
add value by supporting the availability of local produce,
providing specific equipment to support the rearing of rare and
native breeds, encouraging rural employment, and safeguarding the
food supply chain through a diverse and productive abattoir
sector.
Jan Devos, a horticulturalist from Blue Ribbon Plants in
Chichester, received a grant of over £3600 last year for
a rainwater catching and filtration system. She said:
"It's been great for cashflow and to move the business
forward.
“It’s really helped us to modernise and be a more sustainable
operation.”
Over £4800 was awarded to Richard Dew, a dairy and sheep
farmer from Bude, to help purchase a plate heat
exchanger for cooling milk, a mobile sheep handling system and a
rotating cow brush.
“The cow brush for my cattle has really helped improve the herd’s
health and welfare for the better.
“It means I am producing better product from my animals and it’s
made a positive impact on my business.”
ENDS
FACTSHEET
Farm innovation, productivity and animal health and
welfare
- The £168m investment will support farmers through 16
different grants and competitions around research and innovation.
Last year’s funding through the FIP has supported projects such
as CowView, a completely hands-free solution that will monitor a
cow's welfare and performance without the need for wearable
devices; a working herd of harvesting agri-robots, developed by
Muddy Machines, able to harvest vegetables in-field sustainably
and reliably; and Benchmark’s data-sharing solutions for farmers
to support each other in measuring and monitoring soil health
patterns.
- Applications open today for productivity and slurry grants
through the Farming Equipment and Technology Fund (FETF), which
offers specific items of equipment to boost environmental
sustainability, improve animal health and welfare, and reduce
input usage, thereby cutting emissions and waste.
- Following the first round, the list of items has been
reviewed with farmers, vets, academics and industry groups. As a
result, 19 new items to aid productivity and two items to help
with better slurry management have been included for 2023. These
include crop sprayers using precision camera guidance to remove
weeds when spraying between rows of growing crops to help reduce
herbicide usage.
- The grants for 2023/24 increase the amount of money and range
of actions on offer to farmers, building on the £31.5 million
which has already been paid to more than 3,000 successful
applicants in 2022/23.
- Last year’s funding through the FETF has already
delivered:
- Over 600 direct drills for precision drilling crops, to the
value of £12.4 million
- Over 750 dribble bar and trailing shoe applicators for
slurry, worth £5.3 million
- Over 400 mobile sheep handling systems, worth £1.3
million
- Over 40 tractor-mounted sensors, for measuring nitrogen
levels in crops, worth £450,000
- Next month, the FETF will see applications open for our new
£20m Animal Health and Welfare grants – a key part of the Animal
Health and Welfare Pathway. These grants, worth between £1,000
and £25,000, will go towards the cost of items to improve the
health and welfare of livestock, such as livestock handling
equipment to reduce lameness in sheep or cattle, sealed water
tanks to improve biosecurity and reduce disease transmission in
outdoor pigs, or an automated monitoring system and sensors in
poultry housing to limit environmental stress by allowing
adjustments to be made more quickly and efficiently.
- Later in the year, there will be a further round of funding
for investment in water storage (reservoirs) and improving
irrigation, automation and robotics, and new funding to support
upgrades or new housing that improves the ambient environment and
social contact for calves.
Environmental Land Management schemes
(ELMs)
- As government phases out the Basic Payment Scheme, which paid
farmers based on how much land they held, new schemes are being
introduced to pay farmers taking actions to benefit the
environment and biodiversity.
- The three Environmental Land Management schemes are intended
to support the rural economy while achieving the goals of the 25
Year Environment Plan.
- We have already opened our new Environmental Land Management
schemes, the Sustainable Farming Incentive and Landscape
Recovery, in addition to enhancing and expanding the existing
Countryside Stewardship scheme.
- They will help to deliver our ambitious outcomes for the
environment and support a thriving food and farming sector – such
as bringing 60% of England’s agricultural soil under sustainable
management through our schemes by 2030 (through ELMs and the rest
of our farming offer) and decarbonising agricultural emissions by
up to a total of 6 MtCO2e per annum in Carbon Budget 6 (2033-37)
in England.
Sustainable Farming
Incentive
- In late June 2022, we launched the Sustainable Farming
Incentive (SFI) scheme.
- SFI pays farmers to undertake sustainable management actions
(going beyond regulatory requirements) alongside productive
farming.
- SFI is being rolled out incrementally. SFI actions are
grouped into packages set out as
‘standards’.
- Last month we announced
full details on the SFI standards for 2023, with six new
standards:
-
hedgerows standard - farmers will be paid to assess
the condition of hedgerows and manage them in a way that will
work for wildlife and improve
biodiversity.
-
improved grassland standard (brought forward from
2024) - farmers will be paid for actions such as taking
grassland out of management, managing grassland for winter bird
food and establishing and maintaining buffer strips at the edge
of fields – helping wildlife and
biodiversity.
-
low input grassland standard (brought forward from
2024) - farmers will be paid to manage low input grassland to
improve biodiversity, soil management and water
quality.
-
arable and horticultural land standard (brought
forward from 2024) - farmers will be paid for actions including
establishing and maintaining areas of nectar-rich flower mix;
establishing and maintaining flower-rich grass margins, blocks,
or in-field strips; providing winter bird food; establishing
and maintaining grassy field corners and blocks; and
establishing and maintaining buffer
strips.
-
integrated pest management standard - farmers will be
paid to carry out an assessment and produce an integrated pest
management plan; establishing and maintaining flower-rich grass
margins, blocks, or in-field strips, including payments
for not using insecticides and for planting companion
crops.
-
nutrient management standard – farmers will be paid to
make an assessment and produce a report of their management of
nutrients, helping to encourage them to understand how they are
managing nutrients and to take further action to deliver
environmental benefits (e.g. optimise the use of fertilisers to
limit excess nutrients flowing into watercourses). In addition
there are payments for those who incorporate legumes into the
crop and grassland management
- These are in addition to the three standards in place from
the opening of the scheme in 2022:
- Arable and horticultural soils standard (introductory and
intermediate levels)
- Improved grassland soils standard (introductory and
intermediate levels)
- Moorland standard (introductory level)
- The full offer will be in place by 2025.
- Farmers have already started applying with 2,491 applications
submitted, 2,168 offers issued and 2,092 agreements
started.
- We’ve worked closely with the Tenant Farmers Association and
SFI has been designed with tenant farmers firmly in
mind:
- more tenant farmers can access SFI than has been the case
under our previous
schemes.
- this includes farmers with tenancies on a ‘rolling’
year-by-year basis who can enter that land into SFI – if they
expect to have ‘management control’ of it for the 3-year duration
of their SFI standards
agreement.
- Farmers are able to upgrade their SFI agreements annually,
allowing them to add new standards (and more land) into their
agreements.
Countryside Stewardship
- In December, the Secretary of State set out that we are going
to evolve Countryside Stewardship rather than continuing to build
Local Nature Recovery as a new scheme, but incorporating all of
the original ambition. We will also use the feedback from working
with stakeholders on policy development and through tests and
trials carried out over the past few years.
- Last month we announced
what farmers will be paid to deliver through an enhanced
version of the Countryside Stewardship scheme, which will see
around 30 additional actions available to farmers by the end of
2024. The expansion builds on the more than 250 actions farmers
can take at present.
- The scheme will also be improved so farmers benefit from
greater flexibility over when they can apply and how they manage
their agreements, with improved access for tenant farmers and
increased access to Higher Tier options and
agreements.
- Countryside Stewardship Plus will encourage the right things
being done in the right places, enable local join-up to deliver
bigger and better results and facilitate testing of innovative
payment mechanisms, such as payment by
results.
- Countryside Stewardship will be a key vehicle for delivering
significant and important outcomes for the climate and
environment, alongside food production, that can only be
delivered by farmers and in the wider countryside. These
include:
- creating, restoring, and continuing to protect wildlife-rich
habitat
- improving water quality
- increasing resilience to flooding and
drought
- creating more new woodlands to increase tree and woodland
cover, and encouraging management of existing
woodlands
- reducing carbon emissions, storing carbon and increasing
resilience to climate
change
- We expect there to be 32,000 Countryside Stewardship
agreements live at the start of 2023, a 94% increase from
2020.
- In December 2022, there were over 11,000 live Countryside
Stewardship agreements involving management of hedgerows,
covering 58,000 kilometres of hedgerow, while more than 4,000
kilometres of hedgerows are in the process of being
planted.
- In 2022, there were 3,860 Countryside Stewardship Higher Tier
agreements delivering environmental benefits (such as habitat
creation, restoration or management) on our most important sites,
including woodland management.
- The next round of Countryside Stewardship Higher Tier opened
on 8 February 2023 with Mid Tier and Wildlife Offer applications
opening in March for agreements starting on 1 January 2024.
Farmers and land managers can already apply for standalone
capital works to support a range of activities including creating
hedgerows or restoring
stonewalls.
Landscape Recovery
- These longer-term, bespoke projects are a crucial part of our
overall effort to deliver our environment and climate
targets.
- Our first round of 22 Landscape Recovery projects include
projects involving tenants, and the majority involve groups of
farmers working together to deliver a range of environmental
benefits across farmed and rural
landscapes.
- Collectively, the projects aim to restore nearly 700km of
rivers and protect and provide habitat for 263 species such as
water vole, otter, pine marten, lapwing, great crested newt,
European eel and marsh
fritillary.
- We will open applications for further rounds of Landscape
Recovery in Spring this year and in 2024. Round two will focus on
net zero, protected sites and habitat creation. This could
include landscape scale projects creating and enhancing woodland,
peatland, nature reserves and protected sites such as ancient
woodlands, wetlands and salt marshes. We will take on up to 25
projects, depending on the quality of
applications.
- We will be providing more information in the coming weeks via
a series of webinars, which we will encourage all potential
applicants to attend.