Don’t mourn – organise!

Yes – the six-hour scramble for England's Sustainable Farming Incentive was a mess. Yes – it was predicted. Yes – the budget was too small. The question now: what’s really to be done? 

Reactions in the media and online typify how people see the scheme. For the farming lobby, this entry-level offer is the Basic Payment Scheme replacement, a baseline to reduce risk and keep businesses going – all the more important given farming's recent torrid stretch. More money, they say, and keep it simple. For nature groups and eco-minded farmers, the SFI is a doorway, a first step for mainstream producers to shift their operations in a nature-friendly direction. More money, sure, but also targeting, bundles of actions and even whole-farm plans. 

Neither side will wind up satisfied. Government's agricultural budget has been steady in cash terms, but eroded by inflation and underspends, whatever the claims of record spending. Given constrained public finances and pressure to spend more on defence, the NHS and social care, an extra billion or two for farming – even under the agri-environment banner – seems unrealistic. 

Meanwhile, the framework of the English Environmental Land Management schemes is now bedded in, built up over more than half a decade. Farmers have just got used to it. 'Stability!' is their refrain (and was a top concern in FFCC's conversations on climate). Too much of a departure is not pragmatic and wouldn't be popular in Whitehall or the countryside.  

Cash is tight and revolution's off the table. But that can’t mean calling for the same things and getting frustrated when they don't arrive. To borrow the old lefty slogan, 'Don't mourn – organise!'  

There's an opportunity to evolve these schemes, year to year, for the better. One of the strengths of ELM is how it can be progressively tweaked to match changing needs and circumstances. Devolution – that great Burnham priority – might offer a spark. Across the UK, there are now four different regimes up and running for agricultural support. England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland can all learn from what's working well and warn each other off missteps. That includes issues around applications and IT systems. Those conversations should be happening already and must involve wider industry and civil society and draw upon on-the-ground farming experience.   

There's room for smaller experiments. Hilary Cottam's review of the uplands recommended trialling how priorities could be decided and funds distributed at a regional level. Rolled out, this would be a real break, but might make sense for particular landscapes with distinct needs and collective choices to make. Over time, the top of the ELM pyramid, Landscape Recovery schemes covering thousands of hectares, could become more significant and widespread. Working together at a scale that’s intuitive, farmers and landowners can have a positive impact over a vast area – restoring nature, reducing emissions and growing food.  

Public programmes aren’t the be-all. There's lots that farmers are already doing together outside official schemes, as clusters or co-ops or looser arrangements, to pick up streams of new income: processing food, producing energy or creating habitats. For relatively little investment, grants and collaboration funds can spur on this work and provide extra training, resources and people power where needed. 

None of this does away with the problem of money. This June's Farming Roadmap set the course for England – a trajectory likely to be followed around the UK. It talked about how, from the 2030s, public funding for ELM will become more tailored and spatially directed. Many outcomes currently funded will become good (read: unrewarded) practice, enforced in regulation or paid for by private finance and supply chains. The Roadmap states that the government's role is to give certainty, keep markets fair and 'crowd in private investment'.  

It's this supply chain investment and private finance that desperately needs more attention. Not that there isn’t plenty going on. As businesses throughout the economy offset their environmental impact, farmers are starting to tap into the expanding markets for natural capital, the more regulated (such as Biodiversity Net Gain) and the less so (carbon credits). Most High Street banks now offer loans for farms interested in regen or nature-friendly approaches. Big processors, manufacturers and retailers are wading in with sustainability bonuses, multi-year contracts and programmes for building skills and sharing knowledge.  

Government has to be in thick of this. That job of crowding in cash needs to be an active one. The scale of investment needed – to reduce emissions, plant trees, restore peatland, clean up water, develop resilient farming systems and more – requires something akin to a land-based industrial strategy. 

That strategic approach is vital because there are multiple priorities, many competing, that have to be kept in view. Taking too much land out of production for BNG or other land-sparing agreements will start to clash with avowed national goals around low-input farming and maintaining the country's self-sufficiency. Organised sectors like dairy have ambitious plans to become more circular and grow domestic and export markets, but these don’t necessarily line up with the significant change in land use needed for nature and net zero. Money coming into farming risks pulling in different directions. Political leaders and their advisers have a responsibility to take a country-wide view and keep all those balls in the air.  

There is scope for creativity here too. In her Profitability Review, Baroness Batters proposed a SOILSHOT+NATURE taskforce to develop metrics and standards for green finance while keeping farms growing food. If the government is keen to keep private investment on a tighter rein, then it could establish a fund – perhaps filled by a levy on the biggest food businesses against their health and environmental impacts or a pooled pot like that for nature restoration – that would top up the squeezed ELM budget. FFCC’s original report recommended setting up an Agroecology Development Bank. 

None of these is necessarily the answer. But they are examples of how the energy, ideas and money already out there might be harnessed. They are ways of turning the applause-worthy lines we’ve heard in party conference speeches this past fortnight into concrete action. They are how government acts to make farming and nature truly ‘two sides of the same coin’ and food security national security.  

If this sorry incident has proven anything, it's that farmers, with their right incentives, will willingly play their part in tackling big global challenges. People in power need to shape the market like they mean it and in the public interest, showing their workings as they do so. Otherwise we'll be back here in twelve months, in the same old conversation, about empty coffers, avoidable disappointment, and a farming community despondent once again.