Yesterday, Rt Hon Mark Spencer MP, Minister for Food, Farming and Fisheries and Janet Hughes, Programme Director, Future Farming and Countryside Programme appeared before the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee. The session was part of a committee inquiry into the rollout of the new environmental land management schemes.
Following recent media speculation on the future of farming policy in England, we know that you may have some questions about our work. We’ve published a post on Defra's media blog which sets out our response and position.
Farmers in North Cumbria's Forgotten Lands are working with Natural England and Defra to help shape future environmental land management schemes. In this third video in a series of 3 about the North Cumbria Farmers Group Test and Trial, uplands livestock farmer and local history expert Barbara Smith explains how the group have been mapping the natural capital of the land, and the background to this history-rich area of north-west England.
In episode 9 of the Future Farming podcast, Defra's farming strategy lead, Briony Turner, talks to land use adviser Harry Greenfield of the Country Land and Business Association (CLA) and farm adviser Lynette Steel, of the Tenant Farmers Association (TFA) about new environmental schemes.
It’s been almost 2 weeks since we opened the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) for applications, so we thought now would be a good time to share an update on how it’s going so far.
In the latest video in the series about the North Cumbria Farmers Group Test and Trial, uplands livestock farmers Steve and Colin explain their reasons for taking part.
The Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) is now open for applications via the Rural Payments service. Through the SFI, farmers will be paid for looking after the natural environment in the course of their farming. This initial offer will pay farmers for taking care of their soil or assessing the condition of moorland. In this post, we'll share more about the application process.
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.
The Tenancy Working Group exists to ensure that new environmental land management schemes work for tenant farmers. The group is very keen to hear directly from tenant farmers and it has developed a survey to gather views.
In February, we launched the first round of the Landscape Recovery pilot. Landscape Recovery is 1 of our 3 environmental land management schemes. To support potential bidders, we hosted a webinar to share information on the application process and answer questions from those thinking of applying. As you can imagine, we received a lot of questions on the day. In this post, we summarise some of the most-asked questions and our replies.
