After two-and-a-half years’ work, first helping to develop the Breckland Farmers Wildlife Network, then participating in two test and trials of the Environmental Land Management (ELM) scheme, being one of the very few farms to be accepted onto two separate pilots and having recently completed our Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) application, I hope my considerable efforts aren’t going to be completely wasted.

See also: The rare moth putting sugar beet yields at risk this autumn

About the author

Andrew Blenkiron

Arable Farmer Focus writer

Andrew Blenkiron manages the 4,400ha Euston Estate, south of Thetford. Principal farm enterprises are combinable and root crops, including sugar beet. In addition the estate supports let land, sheep, outdoor pigs, poultry, suckler cows, horses and stewardship.

Read more articles by Andrew Blenkiron

I can only ask that the present rapid review of ELM takes note of all of the valuable feedback that farmers have given throughout the development of the scheme.

It has been rather apparent from the beginning of the process that the expectation as to what can be delivered for the funds available has been grossly overestimated, so the review must manage that expectation, prioritise and make some hard choices. 

As promised, the SFI application was completed easily with a few clicks of the mouse, but with one or two little niggles in that I couldn’t add part fields to the application.

It will, be interesting to see what effect our new Countryside Stewardship scheme has on it all, assuming we get accepted to start in January 2023.

I just couldn’t resist testing the IT that extra step and I certainly couldn’t wait and miss out on that level of cashflow for three more months.

One slight concern is that our present level of funding is, as we know, only secure for this parliament, however long that may be.

Even with the present dire economic circumstances that we face as a nation it would be hard to believe that government support for farming would disappear or even reduce at all.

I certainly don’t envy those making the hard choices, not only those that will keep us fed, but those that will keep us warm and hopefully in business as well.

At least one of those decisions will, if the river ever starts to flow, make it affordable to pump water from the river to the reservoir through this next winter.