On Monday 4 December, we’re holding a webinar for arable farmers and horticultural farmers in England to learn more about the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI).
The hour-long session will begin at 11am.
In the webinar, we’ll explain how SFI supports both productivity and the environment. From the actions for soils to the actions for integrated pest management, we'll go through the offer and you’ll be able to put your questions to the team.
The Rural Payments Agency (RPA) will join us to answer operational questions, too.
If you can’t make the webinar, don’t worry. We’ll add the recording of it to this post as soon as it is over.
Finally, a reminder that there's still time to sign up to our webinar for livestock and grassland farmers on Monday 20 November.
2 comments
Comment by Barrie Crowther posted on
My question is - " When did farming in this country become unsustainable? Who in DEFRA decided the new schemes would be beneficial for farmers ? I and many other farmers would love to know, Barrie Crowther
Comment by The Team posted on
Hi Barrie,
A big question - thank you for asking it!
If we take soil as an example. Our soils have degraded over the last 200 years due to intensive agricultural production and industrial pollution. A report by the Environment Agency says that arable soils in England and Wales have lost 40 to 60% of their organic carbon as a result, and climate change further exacerbates the situation.
The aims of all our schemes are to support viable businesses, maintain food production at its current level and achieve environment, climate and animal health and welfare outcomes. Farmers, land managers and foresters (among many others) have helped us to shape all our schemes so we have the best chance of developing workable schemes that meet those aims.
As that relates to the soil example, the production of good quality food depends on healthy soil and we can sequester carbon in well looked-after soil.
The Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) pays farmers to assess, improve and conserve their soils – which in turn means less reliance on costly artificial inputs, while creating significant environmental improvements.
This is just one example of how we think the new schemes (SFI in this case) will benefit farmers. The SFI handbook lists all the actions we'll pay farmers to carry out and the rationale behind them: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/654cdaab5d60950011bec867/SFI23_handbook.pdf or you can visit this page for an overview of SFI: https://farming.campaign.gov.uk/
Best wishes,
The Team