How private cash is funding environmental measures

A system to pay for nature-based measures to address shared challenges along the supply chain is benefiting both funders and farmers in a wide range of landscapes.

Landscape Enterprise Networks (Lens) brings farmers and supply-chain funders together commercially in six countries to help identify shared land management needs that would be difficult for each business to tackle in isolation. 

See also: Opportunities develop in nature markets

This includes mitigating flood risk, improving crop production resilience, meeting greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets, protecting nature, increasing biodiversity, improving water quality, and protecting rivers and other water bodies.

Donald Lunan, chief executive officer of Lens, says different risks often have solutions with a significant overlap.

Take the flooding in Cumbria in 2018 as an example of this.

The flooding led to issues not only for the farms affected but also for Nestlé, which was concerned about the resilience of its milk supply. 

Alongside this, water company United Utilities was worried about phosphorous run-off in the catchment.

Average payment

Businesses invest jointly to fund the on-farm measures, which in 2024 paid an average of £135/ha. Last year saw £10.5m of funding and the level is expected to get close to £32m by the end of this year.

As well as Nestlé, companies including Purina, British Sugar, Diageo and PepsiCo support the model, along with water companies.

There are currently three Lens regions in England – Cumbria, Yorkshire and East of England.

Leven is Scotland’s Lens site, and the most recent addition is West Wales. Lens also operates in Italy, Hungary and Poland.   

Resilient landscapes

“At the heart of Lens are the essential and practical needs that we derive from our landscapes,” says Donald.

“We need functioning and resilient landscapes for our food production, for water provision, biodiversity, recreation, and infrastructure for livelihoods.

“But biodiversity is collapsing, our soils are degraded, climate change is already having an impact and water scarcity is going to be a material issue for over half the world’s population by the middle of this century.”

These issues are interlinked and in many cases are reinforcing and accelerating the risks, he says, citing the winter of 2019 into 2020 as an example.

Then, exceptionally mild weather led to an explosion in the aphid population and virus yellows in sugarbeet.

This, coupled with pesticide use restrictions led to significant yield reductions of 25% across the East of England region, with some individual farms losing almost all of their crop.

In 2018, several whisky distilleries in Scotland had to reduce or even stop production due to a prolonged drought, with low rainfall also affecting barley quality.

Drought followed by floods in Northern Italy cut Prosecco grape yields by 15%, along with huge soil losses through erosion.

© Lens

Emerging risks

Food and drink companies and other organisations are increasingly aware of the emerging risks, and are looking to take action to ensure their particular supply chain or crop of interest is made more resilient.

“Lens is a really simple mechanism that facilitates collective action by bringing together organisations that depend on specific landscapes and pooling their funding for niche-based solutions and regenerative agriculture,” says Donald.

Outcomes are measured, including on soil, biodiversity, climate mitigation and water, reporting back to the funding organisations.

“We focus on the commercial relationships that all stakeholders are familiar with.

“This is not complex financial constructs or holding farmers to long-term contracts, it’s about facilitating action and brokering multi-party contracts that allow for shared objectives to be realised that are locally relevant.”

Farmer-led approach

Farmers decide what is implemented on their land and are able to propose measures they would like to try, based on an agreed list of actions aligned with the needs of the funders.

Lens funding is an ideal way for farmers and funders to test regenerative approaches, says Donald, with three types of funding.  

The first is “measure by measure” payments – the most popular measures implemented in 2024 included practices such as no/reduced tillage or synthetic inputs, cover crops to keep living roots in the soil and hedge planting.

The second payment mechanism is based on outcomes, for example a resilience payment for the level of regenerative agriculture, depending on how many measures are implemented.

A third level – innovation and targeted interventions – funds new technology and measures to address specific challenges, or may address flood risk reduction or water quality.  

Tris Baxter-Smith farms in Northamptonshire and is the senior programme manager for Lens East of England, where 112 farms are involved, attracting more than £3m in funding in 2024 for 41 different measures on farm.

Tris gives the example of a farm near Daventry that is very hilly, but with heavy soil and a “peaky” flooding risk following very short, heavy rainfall blasts.

Soil erosion from arable fields was a real problem, and was tackled with Lens funding for interception ponds, among other measures.

© Lens

A cross-slot drain on the farm’s driveway in association with leaky woody dams has made a meaningful difference when it comes to water speeds, says Tris.  

On another farm water ended up in the wrong place on an arable field and the issue was tackled with a very successful cover crop.

Payment rates compare with similar actions undertaken via Environmental Land Management (ELM) schemes. Lens is not designed to duplicate that but to build on what’s available via ELM.

Farmers are encouraged to apply for measures that are additional to ELM or that expand the area and the quality of those measures.

For example, if ELM offers a three-species cover, Lens could pay for additional species or further areas to be added.

Lens contracts vary from one 10 years.