Defra secretary outlines £45m in new grant funding for farmers
© Amanda Rose/Alamy Live News Further rounds of grant funding worth £45m have been announced by Defra secretary Steve Barclay, designed to help farmers in England improve their productivity as they prepare for a world without direct payments.
Revealed at the Country Land & Business Association’s (CLA’s) conference in London on Thursday 30 November, the new funding forms part of the government’s £168m investment this year “to support farmers to foster innovation, boost productivity and improve animal welfare”.
See also: Delinked payments – all you need to know
The new package includes:
- £30m under the second round of the Improving Farming Productivity Grant, providing capital grants of £25,000-£500,000 towards robotic and automatic equipment. This will open for application in the new year and will, for the first time, pay towards solar equipment
- £8m in the third round of the Large R&D Partnership competition, designed to boost industrial research and experimental development projects, opening on 15 January
- £850,000 through the Research Starter Round 4 competition to help growers or foresters “who have bold, ambitious, early-stage ideas”
- £5m for the third round of the Natural Environment Investment Readiness Fund, to help farmers prepare nature projects that may attract investment from the private sector.
Mr Barclay told the conference: “My pledge is that this government will always back British farmers who produce some of the highest quality food in the world, contribute billions to our economy, and to whom we all owe a debt of gratitude for taking care of our countryside.”
The new grants form part of the government’s £2.4bn annual budget for the English agricultural sector, which it is committed to spend for the life of the current parliament.
Shortfall
However, CLA president Vitoria Vyvyan said farmers in England need at least £4bn a year in support if they are to deliver meaningful improvements to the environment, as well as producing food.
She told the conference current government had fallen short of that £2.4bn commitment in each of the past two years.
“We need an undertaking that Defra ministers will go in to bat for an agriculture budget north of £4bn a year for the next parliament,” she said.
“With this guarantee, businesses can go to the bank with proof of affordability to finance growth, improve margins and confirm a future.”
Labour vows to show more respect to rural communities
The Labour Party has been “too detached” from the aspirations and concerns of rural communities and wants to adopt a more “respectful” attitude, shadow Defra secretary Steve Reed told the CLA conference.
“That means people from urban areas – like me – not telling people who live and work in the countryside how they should live their lives,” he said.
Mr Reed also outlined plans to “rewire Britain”, slashing the time farmers and landowners currently wait to plug their renewable energy into the grid “from years to months”.
The pledge has been welcomed by Ian Gadsby, managing director of power company YLEM Energy, who pointed out that UK farmers currently own or host up to 1,200 of the UK’s solar farms, generating about 10% of the UK’s energy needs.
“This number is set to grow in the years to come,” he said.
“However, in many cases, the grid is not up to the challenge and is in desperate need of upgrading if farmers and landowners are to help the UK meet its ambition to increase its solar output to 75GW by 2035.”
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