Farming on the edge

Adapt or give up? Defra’s new post-Brexit payment schemes for farmers seem to offer both hope and dismay. Julie Harding talks to farming leaders about their concerns for the future

BRITAIN’S farmers are facing a watershed. As the Basic Payment Scheme (BPS), which has provided a financial cushion and prevented many from going bust, plummets on a sliding scale to zero in 2028, food producers and guardians of this green and pleasant land are being encouraged (or cajoled) to put environmental improvements firmly on their agendas (many already do). Farmers who have never previously let hedgerows run riot to provide habitat for nesting birds, beetles, butterflies and dormice will be keeping their hedge cutters parked up; instead of planting crops to within inches of those hedges, they may now decide to make them butt up to several yards of wild field margin, perhaps composed of uncut tussocky grass that offers a home to bank voles, shrews and field mice.

They will be financially compensated for such enhancement ‘actions’, as the Government’s complex Environmental Land Management schemes (ELMS) step into the financial void left by the diminishing BPS. However, until January this year, ELMS was significantly light on detail. Defra then ‘put meat on the bones’, to quote Farming Minister Mark Spencer, accelerated the rollout of the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI), a key part of ELMS, and announced six additional standards, plus 30 new actions within an enhanced Countryside Stewardship (CS) scheme to add to the 250 already available.

So far, however, take up has been meagre. Out of the 80,000–100,000 farmers claiming BPS, by January 30, only 2,353 applications had been submitted for the SFI and 1,962 agreements had started. Some 30,000 farmers are in CS, according to the NFU. Despite this sluggish beginning, the Government has outlined in its new Environmental Improvement Plan (EIP) that it expects up to 80% of farmers to use Nature-friendly practices on 10% –15% of their land by 2030.