In this episode, Lisa Warne talks to John Renner and his son, Charlie. John farms on the border of the Northumberland National Park between Berwick-upon-Tweed and Alnwick. Charlie is a farm business consultant and continues to help out on the farm. Lisa gives an update on the growth and rollout of our environmental land management schemes. John and Charlie talk about how the new farming payments fit in with the management of their farm. They had plenty of questions for Lisa about the new grants and actions.
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.
In summer, we announced the 22 projects chosen for the first round of Landscape Recovery. We initially said we would recruit up to 15 projects, but we were so impressed with the quality of applications that we ended up extending this to 22. In this post, I’ll share more about the projects, including how they were assessed and selected.
In the latest episode of the Future Farming Podcast, Cambridgeshire farmer Martin Lines and Sustainable Farming Incentive lead Jonathan Marsden talk all things Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) and environmental land management.
Farmers will be able to apply for grants to buy equipment, technology and infrastructure to improve the health and welfare of their animals. To make sure we are funding the items that farmers need to make a difference, we want to get a better idea of what we should include. Let us know your thoughts by the end of the month.
We asked farmers helping us co-design the Sustainable Farming Incentive to share their experience in a video diary. In this video, Michael Orchard gives us a tour of his livestock farm in the Peak District National Park. He shares the improvements he’d like to see come out of the Sustainable Farming Incentive pilot.
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.
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.
At the end of last year, we published a manual on the Improving Farm Productivity grant, which is part of the Farming Transformation Fund. Today we opened the window for applications. We’re also hosting a webinar next week for you to find out more.
