Countryside Stewardship

The current offer for horticultural growers and farmers 

Brussel sprouts

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 …

Environmental land management in 2024: details of actions and payments

Sheep grazing in field with trees and farmland in the distance

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.

Countryside Stewardship: Higher Tier agreements to start in 2024

Posted by: , Posted on: - Categories: Countryside Stewardship, Environmental Stewardship
View of countryside with woods in background and cattle at a watering spot

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 …

Countryside Stewardship: delivering for farmers and the environment

Posted by: , Posted on: - Categories: Countryside Stewardship, environmental land management schemes

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.  

Environmental land management schemes: details of actions and payments

Hele, Mid Devon District photograph by Alison Day

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.

Introducing SFI Management Payments and changes to Countryside Stewardship rates

Posted by: , Posted on: - Categories: Countryside Stewardship, Sustainable Farming Incentive, Things we've learned
Winter scene on the Killerton estate by Alison Day

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.

Environmental Stewardship: an update

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 …

How we’re making sure all farm businesses can fairly access money released from Basic Payments

Posted by: , Posted on: - Categories: Countryside Stewardship, Transition support

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 …

Local Nature Recovery in 2022

Posted by: , Posted on: - Categories: Countryside Stewardship, environmental land management schemes
Rolling green hills of the Yorkshire Dales

Local Nature Recovery is the improved and more ambitious successor to the Countryside Stewardship scheme in England. In this post, we’ll provide further detail on what Local Nature Recovery will pay for and explain how we will be working with you over the course of the year to develop the detailed scheme design.

Find out more about Local Nature Recovery and Landscape Recovery

Posted by: , Posted on: - Categories: Countryside Stewardship, environmental land management schemes

Today we published a blog post with news about our 3 environmental land management schemes and Countryside Stewardship payment rates. In that post, we explained how the schemes fit together and the timings for them. In this post, we'll share a bit more information about eligibility and what the schemes will pay for.