As outlined in the Chancellor’s announcement, we have secured a budget of £2.4 billion for the next financial year. This means we can maintain the momentum of our environmental land management (ELM) schemes, which will rise to the highest funding levels ever by 2025/26.
We're developing schemes that reward environmental land management. To make sure that those schemes work in practice, farmers and land managers across England are putting elements of those schemes to the test. It's one of the ways though which we're carrying out co-design. In this video, the North Cumbria Farmers Group share what they've been doing to help shape the future of our schemes.
Some farming and land management activities are regulated to safeguard our environment and to protect the health of animals, plants and people. We do this through around 150 pieces of legislation, comprising primary and secondary legislation. All of this legislation applies to agricultural activity, and collectively constitutes what is known as the ‘regulatory baseline for agriculture’. This is a complex legislative picture and is not easy to navigate – we intend to improve and evolve this baseline in future as part of our agricultural transition outside of the European Union (EU).
In October, we launched the first rounds of funding in our Farming Innovation Programme. As we've been processing the applications, we've seen a promising spread of ideas across the livestock, horticulture and broadacre sub-sectors. These ideas are coming in from across the whole of England. In this post, I'll share next steps and what to look out for this year.
In the seventh episode of the Future Farming podcast, Tim Mordan, Defra’s Head of Farming Innovation, Productivity and Science talks to Rui Andrês, CEO of Fieldwork Robotics, about their innovative raspberry robot picker.
Today, we published our initial priorities for the Animal Health and Welfare Pathway. They represent some of the best opportunities for improving animal health and welfare we have across each livestock sector. In this post, I’ll share those priorities.
Recently we ran the first round of our new Farming Equipment and Technology Fund. We received 5,624 eligible applications worth a total overall value of just over £53.5 million. This is triple our initial budget allocation for the fund.
Slurry contains lots of nutrients including nitrates, phosphate and potash as well as a host of other things that can benefit soil health and support crop growth. It can, however, create significant pollution to our water and air. Through co-design, our team joined with a group of farmers, industry leaders and experts to explore the subject. In this post, we’ll share what we’ve learned and how we plan to support farmers so that nutrients from slurry aren’t lost, that any damage to our environment is reduced and farmers aren’t dependent on expensive artificial fertilisers.
Today, we've blogged about how we're working with farmers and others across the industry to use slurry to our advantage. Farmers told us that finance often stands in the way of improving their slurry and nutrient management systems. Investing in slurry equipment and infrastructure is expensive. Particularly when it comes to integrating new technologies, techniques and building infrastructure. In this post, we'll share how we've been developing slurry grants to better support farmers and what to expect later this year.
More than 4,000 people from across the farming community in England are now working with us to design, pilot, test and trial new farming policies and schemes. In this post, we’ll explain how we’re working with the farming community. We'll also share the 7 co-design principles we’re encouraging groups to follow.
One of the ways we’re supporting farmers is through the Future Farming Resilience Fund. Through the fund, independent advisers can provide free business advice to farmers in England. In this post, I’ll share 2 new pieces of information about the fund. The first is a new opportunity for advice providers. The second is a request for farmers to give us feedback on the advice they’ve received through the fund.
On 27 and 28 November, you can come and put your questions to us at the CropTec in Stoneleigh.
Find us at these shows and conferences.
