SFI set to widen to include pig farmers in 2024

Pig producers and other farmers who cannot currently access Defra’s Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) in England will be able to sign up in 2024, and are actively encouraged to do so.

Addressing the cross-party Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Efra) committee in Westminster on Tuesday (24 October), Defra secretary Therese Coffey explained that, so far, the scheme had been open only to farmers who had received money under the Basic Payment Scheme (BPS).

See also: NFU seeks more details on SFI hedgerow standard

“That will change from next year,” she said.

“There are quite a lot of pig farmers who aren’t eligible for BPS.

“I want to make sure they can access it (SFI), because our overall outcome is a combination of food security, but also environmental improvement.

“There is no reason why pig farmers can’t contribute.”

Ms Coffey said she had asked the Rural Payments Agency (RPA) for more details of which farming groups were and were not already eligible to join the SFI within regions.

The RPA has also been phoning farmers who had started the SFI application process but not completed it, to find out why, as part of a drive to maximise the number of farmers involved.

Uptake update

Providing the committee with an update on the uptake of the 2023 SFI since the scheme opened about a month ago, Ms Coffey said there had so far been 1,216 applications, of which 577 had been offered agreements, 330 had accepted them, and 52 had actually started implementation.

Defra research had shown that two thirds of applicants were happy with the process, and 45% had managed to complete their applications in less than one hour.  

First early payments, worth 25% of the full annual payment, had also started going out.

In response to another question about what was happening to money taken as BPS cuts this year and not allocated to alternative schemes, Ms Coffey said this amounted to just £170m out of a budget of £2.4bn, and confirmed that it would be rolled over into 2024, when uptake of SFI would be greater.