Editor’s View: SFI debacle was a grim day we all saw coming
© GNP What is one to say about the dispiriting events of this week relating to the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) fund, which was so unequally matched to the demand for it.
In the brief hours in which it was open for applications, funding flooded out of the door at more than £10,000 a second, briefly outstripping the pace at which even the NHS budget is spent.
And like all flash floods, it has left a trail of devastation in its wake – those who missed out.
See also: £233m of SFI26 money all spent within matter of hours
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Across England this week are angry, frustrated and worried folk who had hoped to continue good environmental work they had started or even join a scheme for the first time but may now feel compelled to tear it up.
This is a calamity that everyone forecast and no-one is surprised by, but no less painful for it.
Everyone knew that Labour’s dire sloganising about this being the biggest ever farming budget was claptrap.
Like the Tories before them, they failed to secure funding to be adequate for the number of farmers seeking to tap it for a stable additional funding stream in a world where agricultural prices are volatile and frequently below the cost of production.
And how hollow these words from June 2025 now ring as well: “One of our key objectives is to ensure the user experience of the schemes is prioritised, so that bureaucracy does not become a barrier between the schemes and these busy farmers.”
However, I fear we may yet look back and see this as a high point compared to what comes after.
There is little yet known about the 2027 scheme, beyond a commitment to maintain the budget at the same rate and, for the first time, to prioritise funds to areas where they can deliver the most environmental impact.
Looking further ahead, there is no funding promised beyond the current spending window, which ends in 2029.
Defra’s farming roadmap foresees more money from private investors coming in to fund environmental actions by 2030 and beyond.
That seems more in hope than expectation, as we have reported extensively this year, given the lack of appetite from farming’s customers to take more of a leading role given the complexities involved and the myriad calls on their own cash.
How enviously now will English farmers be looking over the hedge at their friends in Wales and Scotland, and across the water in Northern Ireland, where every farm can still access a payment.
Scotland has also benefited from the Suckler Beef Support Scheme and farmers there have suffered far less of the droughts of the previous two years.
A little over 100 years ago, a multitude of good Scottish farmers came south to pursue dairy farming in East Anglia after, it is said, too many of the incumbents had refused to abandon unprofitable arable farming.
Perhaps now in time we will instead see English farmers marching north to find a farm in a greener and more pleasant land, where there appears to still be more money in the job.
Whether they can teach the locals anything new about the business of farming though, is not for me to say.