No support, no clarity and no way forward as the plug is pulled on the Sustainable Farming Incentive, says George Hosford
Few English farmers will have missed the Government’s brutal and abrupt halting of the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) (extended offer) 2024 version, pulled without warning at 6pm on Tuesday 11th March. For non-farming BV readers, it’s worth explaining the consequences of this decision.
Following the 2024 autumn budget, DEFRA announced a drastic early cut to the Basic Payment Scheme (BPS), which was the long-standing EU-era subsidy. BPS enabled UK (and other EU) farmers to produce food at far below the true cost of production for very many years. After Brexit, the government of the day promised a land of milk and honey, proposing the use of public money to pay for public goods. Under the Environmental Land Management Scheme (ELMS), BPS would phase out by 2028, gradually replaced by support for sustainable farming practices – chiefly the SFI.
In practice, that transition proved far from smooth. The NFU repeatedly asked for delays to the BPS wind-down due to SFI rollout delays: to no avail. The SFI pilot launched in 2022, and then as a fully functioning scheme in 2023. It worked, it paid out quarterly and quite a few farmers engaged with it. In late 2024, the SFI 2024 extended offer was launched with more than 100 options. But applications were wildly complicated, especially if you already had SFI 2023 options in place. In many cases, conflicting options had to be removed by the Rural Payments Agency before progress could be made. Even so, many farmers persevered.
Pulled the plug
Then we had the budget and BPS was decapitated: a rumble of upset and worry was heard throughout English farming. Renowned Cumbrian shepherd and author James Rebanks said he believed that the progressive greener dream for UK farming had died. I have tried hard not to agree with him, but am now very depressed by having to admit that I do.
Then came the blow. Without prior notice or warning, the 2024 extended SFI was abruptly closed. To withdraw what was originally described as a rolling application scheme – one you can apply to at any time in the year – within five months of the sudden removal of the BPS, is heart-stoppingly shocking, and desperately sad. The likely consequences are truly scary. There was no warning, or any hint that we should get a shift on with applications. The loss of trust is profound. Many farmers embraced SFI and Countryside Stewardship schemes, seeing them as a route to farming more sustainably. Now they are left mid-transition, unsupported.
Many farmers have poured energy into more sustainable practices, using Countryside Stewardship (CS) and SFI as a back-stop, while exploring less damaging ways to grow food. This is a terrible betrayal of farmers who are bold enough to try to do the right thing.
We’ve been encouraged to reduce fertiliser, switch to cover cropping, plant bird food plots and companion crops, or try insecticide-free options: all aimed at giving farmers the confidence to farm in a less damaging fashion. These all require long-term planning, and many were underpinned by SFI options. Many farmers are now left with little choice but to stick with – or revert to – the high-input systems that are so damaging to soil, water and climate.
It is such a short-sighted move, destroying trust, and will ever more deeply entrench the old fashioned view that “this is how we’ve always done it and I’m not changing now”.
Weaning off the high-nitrogen, pesticide and intensification treadmill is incredibly difficult, and without the support of schemes like SFI it will never happen, so the damage to soil, water and environment will continue.
In our own case, we had an SFI 2024 application ready to submit. But because of clashing rotational offers between SFI 2023 and 2024, we had to wait for RPA adjustments. While we were doing due diligence to ensure our commitments were manageable – especially with more than 15 years of previous scheme obligations still active – the whole thing was cancelled.
We’re told a replacement might appear in 2026. DEFRA has pulled the plug with no warning, deadline or proper explanation.
We’re now worse off than last year.
Options like insecticide-free cropping, low-input cereals or no-till methods are not just ‘environmental nice-to-haves’ – they were ways of bridging productivity and sustainability, of trialling new systems with some security. For new applicants now, those supports are gone.
Policy whimsy
It’s easy to understand why so many farmers have stayed out of SFI and CS schemes altogether. Systemic change in farming takes time. Decisions like this only make the sceptics dig in harder. When policies shift on a whim, why risk changing the way you farm?
Some farmers who dipped into Countryside Stewardship were waiting for their agreements to end, ready to switch into SFI wholesale. What are they supposed to do now? The government had the chance to build something lasting: replacing flat-rate subsidies with support tied to outcomes. SFI 2023 was working. Perhaps SFI 2024 tried to do too much too soon.
But pulling it entirely? It defies logic.
The decapitation of BPS last autumn was bad enough: SFI was supposed to be the safety net to help us through that. To then destroy that safety net is a betrayal of monstrous proportions. That the government fails to understand anything about farming is terrifyingly exposed by this move. And a deeper question remains: what is the government’s real direction of travel on food, nature and climate?
All the things they have said to us, from Starmer “having our backs covered” to DEFRA secretary Steve Reed’s speech at NFU conference, ring utterly hollow. They told us the agricultural transition would reward public goods.
Now, with no BPS and no SFI, there’s no cushion. Only uncertainty.
And for farmers trying to do the right thing, this feels like betrayal.
Keep up to date with George on his blog ViewFromTheHill.org.uk
