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.
Earlier this month, we attended both the Oxford Real Farming Conference and the Oxford Farming Conference (OFC). In this post, we share 2 videos. The first video is a session hosted by Jim Egan and Jonathan Baker on environmental land management and the agricultural transition. The second video features farmers John Geldard and Ben Taylor-Davies. John gives his opinion on the work of the team and Ben describes his experience of SFI and plans for his farm.
The Agricultural Transition Plan update includes the full range of new and updated Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) actions and the payment rates available in 2024. In this post, we focus on the new agroforestry actions and include improvements to the Countryside Stewardship (CS) offer for trees and woodlands.
Mother and son team, Tracey and Will, run a dairy and beef farm in Langley Mill, Derbyshire. In this film, they talk through the SFI actions they’ve included in their agreement, including herbal leys in rotational pasture, hedgerows, soils, legume mix with grasses and pest management. They describe how SFI helps them to balance the books, take care of the environment and build the resilience of their farm business.
Round 2 of the Slurry Infrastructure grant will close for applications on Wednesday 17 January. We’re supporting many more projects than we did last year, so if you need slurry storage, now is the time to apply for a grant. In this post, I’ll give you a recap of the grant and the information you need to get started.
Last week, we published a post about the Agricultural Transition Plan update. The update includes the full range of Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) actions — new and updated — with their payment rates. In this post, we will focus on the new actions relevant to those who farm in the uplands, both moorland and non-moorland grassland.
On Friday 26 January, we held a webinar for farmers. During the session, we went through the actions and payments available through our environmental land management schemes in 2024. This post includes a link to the recording.
Tenant farmers are at the heart of the rural economy, managing a third of all farmland in England. To meet our food security and environmental objectives, we must make sure that all farmers, including tenant farmers, can access our schemes and build thriving farm businesses. In this post, we’ll explain how we are continuing to design our schemes with tenant farmers in mind. We’ll provide an update on how we are embedding an understanding of the tenanted sector across Defra. We’ll also summarise the progress we’ve made so far.
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.
We recently held a webinar for arable and horticulture farmers. Our aim was to go through the 2023 Sustainable Farming Incentive offer for those farm types and answer your questions. In this post, I'll share a summary of the things we covered and set out the offer for these sectors.
The Wigan Greenheart Landscape Recovery project covers a combined area of approximately 1,446 hectares in Lancashire. In this post, project manager Tony Da Silva shares an overview of the site, its history and the project team's ambition to support a thriving natural environment in which people, wildlife and agriculture can flourish.
On 9-10 January we’re at the Oxford Farming Conference and the Oxford Real Farming Conference.
Come and say hello to our team.
You can also find us at these agricultural shows and conferences in 2025.
