Farmers in England furious as Defra pauses post-Brexit payment scheme
Farming and countryside groups in England are furious that the government has paused a key post-Brexit farming payments scheme with little information about what will replace it and when.
In a statement on Tuesday evening the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said the sustainable farming incentive would no longer accept new applications.
The SFI is part of a package of payments that replaced the EU’s common agricultural policy and paid land managers for the amount of land in their care, with the aim of paying farmers to look after nature, soil and other public goods, rather than simply for farming and owning land.
Daniel Zeichner, the food security and rural affairs minister, told ministers the scheme had been implemented much more thoroughly under the current government than under the Conservatives and that all existing and pending packages would be honoured.
But asked when a new incarnation of the SFI might be in place and what the budget would be, Zeichner said this would have to wait for the spending review.
A revised version would be announced in the coming months, he said, adding: “We will be coming forward with a scheme which is properly capped, because the problem we inherited from the previous government was no cap on this scheme.
“It’s basically first-come-first-served, and there was always going to come a point where it was finished, which is essentially the point we’ve reached.”
There had been uncertainty about the future of the SFI but the sudden end to new applications has infuriated farming and nature groups, who said the cumbersome process for applying meant a number of farmers would be left in the lurch, with response times by the Rural Payments Agency, which administers the scheme, slow. Last year only 224 farmers in England received payments under SFI.
The National Farmers’ Union said the news was disastrous and would badly affect farmers’ trust in the government.
Tom Bradshaw, the NFU president, said: “What we have now is the haves and the have nots.
“A large chunk of the industry cannot access any money until next year.
“They’ve just hit the reset button again today and it’s disastrous. Farmers now have a lack of trust in the department and in the government and we don’t know how we are going to move on from here.”
Victoria Vyvyan, the president of the Country Land and Business Association, which represents rural business owners including farmers, said: “Of all the betrayals so far, this is the most cruel. It actively harms nature. It actively harms the environment. And, with war once again raging in Europe, to actively harm our food production is reckless beyond belief.”
Asked about the angry reaction, Zeichner said: “I understand there will be people will be disappointed, and that’s why we’ll be coming forward after spending review with a revised scheme which people can apply for.”
