Farmer Focus: SFI 2026 set to be a shadow of its former self

The taps have been turned on since Christmas, with no field work done for some time and water falling from the sky daily.

What type of growing season will we be receiving this year? 

See also: Early reports of severe chocolate spot in winter beans

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Tim Parton

Tim Parton manages 300ha in South Staffordshire growing winter wheat, OSR, spring barley, beans, oats, lupins and wild flowers as part of a biological farming system. He grows cover crops and grass for haylage across sandy clay loam soils.

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Fortunately, soils here have coped with continued rain very well. Infiltration rates are running normally at about 2.5cm, every 37sec.

When I first started out on the direct-drilling journey, infiltration rates were taking 6-7min.

Perhaps the government should be looking at improving soil to be able to infiltrate more water?

The biggest storage capacity must be our soil. Sequestering carbon back into our soils, increasing soil organic matter levels should be the priority.

It would certainly help with the amount of water that can be seen running off fields when it could be stored in nature’s carbon sponge.

If only soils were looked after. A scheme called the Sustainable Farming Incentive was doing just that.

But it seems the autocratic government has brought this to a close and it now looks set to be a mere shadow of its former self. This will have a major impact on farm income and soil health.

Will policymakers ever wake up and see how important farmers are for planet survival? Or will it take another food shortage from natural, or engineered, disasters around the world?

History has shown time and time again how important food security is to a society’s survival. And yet we are being steered straight towards food shortages.

It seems it will take this for our government to take food seriously. 

I hear that bank borrowings on arable farms are rising, trying to survive the turmoil that we have been thrown into.

Government seems hell bent on destroying our industry at the moment, when we really should be focused on increasing production and growing quality British food.

Let’s hope there are still some farmers left when this happens, because I fear if we have another poor harvest a lot of businesses may not survive.