An edited version of this letter appears in the latest edition of Farmers Weekly:
The new Minister of State for Food Security and Rural Affairs, Stephen Morgan, is to be welcomed into his important new role during one of the most consequential months in the department’s history – the rollout of what must, surely, be the final iteration of the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) after a decade of arrested development and false starts under his six predecessors.
Given a period of gestation as long as the Trojan War (not noted for its brevity) and the elimination of old-style area payments, it might be expected that the flagship policy for post-CAP farming and environmental management in England would be in a strong position to deliver on many of the legally binding environmental objectives to which successive governments have set themselves.
And yet the £240m committed between now and spring 2027 is, according to the RSPB, unable even to match the £400m of existing schemes due for expiry in that period, while the new £100,000 cap per agreement will stymie the ambition of even medium-sized farms to deliver for nature and climate. This is not what farmers were promised by successive governments who claimed their support would match our aspiration.
Given the scale of the benefits food production geared around a thriving natural environment can deliver for the nation, we can only hope that we have finally landed on the mythical combination of Defra ministers able to take the fight for a transformative budget allocation to Numbers 10 and 11 Downing Street.
Joe Stanley
Head of Sustainable Farming
The Allerton Project
Leicestershire