Editor’s View: Is the government losing its ambition on SFI?
© Tim Scrivener Is the UK government, regardless of which party is in control, capable of delivering ambitious policies?
That’s the question I’ve been pondering this week following the revelation that Defra is considering cutting some Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) payments to below income forgone levels.
See also: Below-cost SFI payments spark farmer backlash
About the author
Brexiteers once spoke with confidence about what UK agriculture could achieve outside the constraints of the CAP.
During his time at Defra, Michael Gove in particular set out a bold vision for the future of farming in England based upon the principle of public money for public goods.
But now it feels as though we could be drifting towards an era of “public goods at a private loss”.
Access to SFI funding is also likely to be strictly controlled with the introduction of caps to the scheme, either for overall payments or individual options.
That may offer reassurance to a department still bruised from having to close the previous scheme due to overspend risk.
And it fits Labour’s ideological desire to direct funds towards smaller farmers instead of large landowners.
But the danger is these caps limit nature recovery at a time when independent watchdogs warn that the UK is off track to meet key environmental targets.
In this light, a private opinion among civil servants that 50% participation in schemes may be acceptable raises an uncomfortable thought: has diminished delivery become tolerable?
Participation ultimately follows the money and if revised SFI payments do not cover costs, engagement will decline.
There is a risk, however, that a decline in participation may not be viewed as failure by Defra, but a way of identifying those businesses able to absorb environmental delivery in their commercial model.
Under that logic, SFI shifts from being a partnership with the sector to something closer to a stress test, with fewer agreements and lower ambition per hectare repackaged as stability.
This would be politically safer. There will be no sudden closures of a smaller, less ambitious scheme due to overspend risk.
Perhaps this was inevitable and the system is settling where Whitehall always knew it would – in a fiscally contained and politically manageable place.
Instead of stepping out into a brave new world (sunlit uplands, anyone?), we are retreating to the familiar.
For me, this is yet more evidence that Westminster is not capable of Doing Big Things.
The pattern is not confined to agriculture. From HS2 to Heathrow expansion, social care reform to housebuilding or net-zero delivery, successive governments have announced sweeping ambitions only to dilute them under fiscal pressure, political resistance or administrative strain.
Maybe this is simply how modern British governance functions: bold in declaration, cautious in execution.
But where does that leave farmers? The removal of direct payments has not eliminated risk, it has redistributed it.
More volatility now sits on farm balance sheets, with environmental delivery partly contingent on whether the numbers stack up.
In the absence of a clear and consistent long-term settlement from the government, farmers will have to shape their own strategy.
Because if SFI is evolving into a stress test, it is farmers – not Whitehall – who will be taking it.