On Wednesday 27 March, we held a webinar on the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) and Countryside Stewardship (CS) schemes for upland farmers. In this post, we summarise what we covered and include links for you to learn more.
Over the past few weeks, we've summarised the updates to our environmental land management offer by farm type. These posts follow last month's Agricultural Transition Plan update. In this post, we’ll focus on the updated offer for livestock and grassland farmers.
The horticulture industry in England is diverse. As such, we and have a range of different offers available for farmers and growers. Whether you grow carrots or strawberries, daffodils or apples there is support you can access to help increase your productivity, improve the environment and innovate. In this post, we’ll summarise the schemes and grants horticultural famers and growers can access now. We'll also include links for you to join 2 upcoming webinars.
Today we published an update to the Agricultural Transition Plan on GOV.UK. It includes our progress, priorities and plans for the coming years. In this post, I'll share a summary of the update which includes details of scheme payment rates, premium payments, new actions and plans for a single application service.
The window for applications for Countryside Stewardship Higher Tier closed in April. Mid Tier and Wildlife Offer agreements are still open for applications until 18 August 2023. A number of 3-year capital grants are also open to help achieve specific environmental benefits, including a new Higher Tier Capital grant, woodland tree heath grants and Woodland Management Plans. In this post, we’ll set out the process for assessing applications and provide an update on the number of applications being taken forward.
Countryside Stewardship provides financial incentives for farmers, foresters and land managers to look after and improve the environment. Through the scheme, thousands of farmers are being paid for the valuable work they do. In this post, we’ll give you a refresher, share some facts and figures and explain how you can get involved.
We recently published more information on the rollout of our environmental land management schemes. It includes the full range of actions, payment rates and when they’ll be available. This post gives a scheme-by-scheme summary.
In this, the first blog post of the year, I’d like to share two updates with you and explain the rationale behind them. The first update is a change to Countryside Stewardship payment rates. The second is the introduction of the Sustainable Farming Incentive Management Payment.
We recently wrote to everyone with Environmental Stewardship agreements to outline some changes that we plan to introduce in 2023. Rather than offering agreement holders an extension of a single year, we're offering extensions of 5 years. This change, shaped by feedback, gives greater certainty and clarity to people in existing agri-environment agreements. It also removes the burden of having to apply for an extension each year.
The government has committed to maintain the farming budget for England at £2.4 billion per year throughout this parliament. We will be gradually reducing spending on Basic Payments each year over the next 6 years. Instead, we will make the money available to farmers through one-off grants for capital investment in equipment and technology, and ongoing payments for environmental actions and related advice and support. Farmers will be able to get paid for a combination of actions that they choose, to suit their farm business, food production and the environment.
Come and talk to us at these agricultural shows in 2024.
