Opinion: Government’s SFI shift is a betrayal of farmers

“Don’t piss in my pocket then tell me it’s raining” perhaps best encapsulates the response to Defra’s bombshell announcement on the evening of 11 March that it was suspending applications to the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI), the flagship support scheme for nature and climate friendly farming in England.

As if the act itself weren’t bad enough, the 6pm surprise press release attempted to frame as good news what the usually diplomatic NFU described as “another shattering blow from a failing department”, declaring: “Record number of farmers in SFI schemes as government successfully allocates ­farming budget”.

See also: Opinion – farmers can’t pay for society’s ecological conscience 

“Record number of passenger journeys completed as White Star Line successfully allocates lifeboat budget” might have been a contemporaneous headline from the maiden voyage of the Titanic, had the same Defra PR bod been on the job in 1912.

For those outside farming unaware of the dire implications of this action – government MPs, I’m looking at you – let me summarise.

Post-Brexit policy

Upon leaving the EU, the previous government determined that area-style farm payments (intended to mitigate against agricultural volatility and support cheap food production) would be replaced in England by payments to carry out environmental good work, a major shift from the post-war social contract to provide cheaper, plentiful food.

For the past eight years, tortuous policy development has inched farmers towards accepting this new role, creating a new social contract under which government would pay for the nature and climate benefits that only farmers can deliver, to help achieve our legally binding national targets.

And pay it must, because the free-market economy doesn’t invest in flowers and bees when it can invest in yachts and dividends.

SFI suspension

The announcement that – due to a groundswell of farmers actually rising to the challenge – the government has decided to indefinitely suspend SFI marks the tearing up of that social contract.

Defra states that if and when SFI returns in 2026, it will be capped and targeted at certain geographies.

Most farmers will be left to the mercies of the market, with a single choice: to farm the land harder to try scratching a living in an industry with an average return on capital of -0.09% over the past decade.

Implications for nature

The implications for nature are obvious, and ominous.

Where do farmers stand, after nearly a decade of Environmental Land Management (ELM) development? All four of the main pillars – SFI, Higher Tier, Landscape Recovery and Capital Grants – are either closed or suspended.

There is no mechanism for some two-thirds of English farmers outside ELM to undertake nature recovery and access any of the old CAP money taken to fund the new schemes – which previously equated to 62% of their income, on average.

The shuttering of SFI adds to the other miseries this government has piled on farmers in the mere nine months since coming to power – and God help any other sectors to which it might pledge its “cast iron support”.

To quote Victoria Vyvyan, the Country Land and Business Association president, it really does feel that – against all logic – agriculture has been “selected for pain”.

It’s certainly been led up the garden path, and selected for betrayal.