Editor’s View: Stage set for pivotal September for farming
© GNP The runners are already assembling on the starting line of what is set to be this month’s biggest race in England.
Not Doncaster Racecourse’s 250th St Leger Stakes, but the race to submit a Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) application when the window opens on 22 September.
Troublingly, a large proportion of the field are not even expected to successfully cross the finish line, with too many farmers likely to be applying for a pot that isn’t big enough for all of them to secure an agreement.
See also: Five ways to get your farm ready for SFI window 2
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Indeed, as has already been noted in Farmers Weekly, experts say the budget will be insufficient to roll over all those farmers already in an environmental scheme – either Countryside Stewardship or an existing SFI agreement – that is due to end in 2026.
That is before we even get to those not already in a scheme who would have been looking to enter into a contract for the first time.
Successive secretaries of state throughout the development of the over-arching Environmental Land Management scheme have never promised this would be a scheme that would reach everywhere as area payments did.
Yet as we have charted over the years, there has been a gradual whittling away of ambition for the scheme as interest from the centre of government has waned from its quirky high point under Theresa May and Boris Johnson.
Pressures over budgets have also intensified and there has been a decline in interest from the private sector as other priorities, such as adoption of artificial intelligence, have come to the fore.
Indeed, as deputy editor Abi Kay discovers in this week’s news analysis (Farmers Weekly, 4 September, p14), the envisioned future of an increasing role for private money to make up for the shortfall in public expenditure looks as confusing as ever.
Beyond SFI, this month looks set to be a pivotal one in determining how the fortunes for the next 12 months shake out.
We’re likely to finally have more information published on the UK-EU SPS deal that will have a significant impact on the arable sector and others.
There will also be intensifying pressure on Defra and the prime minister to make good on their promise that the so-called drought package was the beginning of additional support for farmers to recover from the extraordinary weather this summer.
The call from a consortium of farming unions for a package of interest-free loans for farmers may not save many farms that were otherwise destined to fail, a senior banker told me this week, but it would be a strong signal of the government’s intent.
But for many farmers, the biggest signal of a shift in sentiment towards the sector would be a complete reversal of the hated changes to inheritance tax.
Some cheer on that front this week as the Tories showed they have far from finished on campaigning on the topic and the CLA brightly forecast that chances of further changes have improved compared to where we were six months ago.
Even the Countryside Alliance are getting in on the act later this month by wheeling out David Cameron, Lord Blunkett and Baroness Batters to speak at an event.
That’ll show them.