Minister of State DEFRA (): The Sustainable Farming
Incentive is an important element of our new and improved offer
for farmers through the agricultural transition. It pays farmers
for actions that support food production and can help improve
farm productivity and resilience, while also protecting and
improving the environment. This includes actions relating to soil
health, hedgerow management, providing food and habitats for
wildlife, and managing pests and nutrients.
When adopted at scale by farmers, these actions will make a
significant contribution to our statutory environment and climate
targets, and also support our objectives to maintain food
production and improve farm productivity. This includes our aim
published in the Environmental Improvement Plan of between 65 to
80% of landowners and farmers adopting nature friendly farming on
at least 10-15% of their land by 2030.
We are taking an agile, incremental approach to rolling out
environmental land management schemes as we phase out land-based
subsidies. This involves working with farmers and acting on their
feedback to refine our policies and schemes, as we recently set
out for upland and tenant farmers. This is essential when
delivering a complex and important programme of reforms.
As part of this approach, we have made a number of improvements
to the 2023 offer based on learning from our pilot and the
initial rollout of the scheme in 2022.
Today we are confirming the final details of the Sustainable
Farming Incentive 2023 offer, as well as the final detail on the
SFI Management Payment, and how those already in the scheme
agreements can access the offer this year. From August this year,
we will accept applications for a total of 23 paid-for actions in
the scheme. The application process is straightforward and quick,
and we will pay farmers every quarter starting in the fourth
month of their agreement. This builds on the prospectus published
in January setting out significant detail across our new farming
schemes.
We are introducing twice as many new actions this year as we
originally planned and making the scheme even more flexible for
farmers. As we introduce more actions, farmers will be able to
upgrade their agreement to add more actions and add more land.
The offer includes a management payment to cover the costs of
taking part in an agri-environment scheme, which particularly
benefits smaller farms. It also includes an extra payment for
farmers on common land to recognise the costs of managing
agreements involving multiple parties on commons.
For tenant farmers, along with other improvements we have made in
response to Baroness Rock’s review, there are short (three year)
agreement lengths that do not require landlord consent, and those
on shorter, rolling tenancies can join the scheme and leave
without penalty if they lose management control of the land.
To allow a smooth transition to our updated offer, we have closed
applications to the existing scheme (SFI 2022) until the new
offer opens for applications in August. Those in our pilot, or
already in an SFI agreement, can access the new offer and we will
write to all agreement holders to advise them. This is part of
our commitment to ensure that those who enter our schemes early
are not made worse off by improvements we make as the transition
progresses.
