Trust Eroded After Government Closes Sustainable Farming Programme, Industry Groups Say

The Nature Friendly Farming Network has called for an interim agri-environment scheme to support farmers who missed out on accessing the SFI.

A tractor at a farm in Harpenden, England, on April 8, 2022. Hollie Adams/Getty Images

Trust between farmers and the government has been further undermined by the sudden closure of the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) to new applicants, farming groups have said, deepening tensions with the industry following recent changes to inheritance tax policies impacting family farms.

The SFI offered financial incentives to farmers to adopt environmentally-friendly land management practices aimed at improving soil health and water quality and supported actions that promote biodiversity, such as encouraging bees and other pollinators.

However, the scheme was suddenly closed to new applicants on March 11—after farmers were previously advised there would be six weeks’ notice before closure—with the Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (Defra) saying that owing to a high level of participation, the programme had hit its budgetary limit.

Martin Lines, CEO of the Nature Friendly Farming Network (NFFN), told The Epoch Times that farmers who were in the process of applying before the scheme was closed cannot access the funds they need.

He said many farmers had spent money on preparing to implement the changes, budgeting with the SFI funds in mind, but “they now have got a cost to bear and no scheme to access.”

Trust Broken

Lines said that the reaction from farmers to the closure was “shock and very much disappointment.”

For many farmers, adopting nature-friendly methods means rethinking their business approach to achieve both productive farming for food security and delivering “public goods” that benefit nature.

“So that sudden closure just erodes that trust,” Lines said.

“Farming is long-term planning over a number of years to deliver outcomes. That trust has been eroded every time this happens,” Lines said, when describing the lack of clarity over and abrupt changes to government programmes.

The Country Land and Business Association (CLA) has also criticised Defra’s sudden halting of the SFI scheme, and the “total lack of communication around its decision” which has “sent shockwaves through the farming sector.”

CLA Deputy President Gavin Lane told The Epoch Times that “trust has been broken” and “urgent action is now needed if Defra is to stand any chance of rebuilding confidence.”

“The revised version of SFI must be launched as soon as possible, working with the industry to design a scheme that is transparent and accessible to all farmers and landowners, to benefit nature, the environment, and food production,” Lane said.

Martin Lines, chief executive of Nature Friendly Farming Network, in an undated file photo. Nature Friendly Farming Network/PA Media

Call for Interim Support

Defra has said it will provide further details about the reformed SFI in the future, with the programme expecting to be available by spring 2026.

But the NFFN said many farmers cannot wait that long for support.

The network is calling on the government to introduce an interim agri-environment scheme to support farmers “to deliver public goods for the next 18 months to two years, until the next scheme is available.”

Lines said that based on farmers’ experience of previous schemes, even if the new measures are announced next spring, it will not be until summer 2026 before full applications are available, meaning farmers—especially those on less productive landscapes—will have to wait until autumn or winter 2026 for funding.

Changes to Land Use

The government says that nearly half of all farming land and 37,000 farmers are currently part of the SFI scheme, with around 800,000 hectares of arable land now farmed without insecticide and 75,000 kilometres of hedgerows being restored and protected for the benefit of wildlife.

Defra said that all existing SFI agreement holders will continue to be paid under the terms of its duration, which is three years, meaning that those who were accepted recently will be covered until 2028.

It added that any eligible applications that were submitted but not accepted before the cut-off will also be considered.

Farming experts like the CLA have pointed to the importance of such funded programmes and diversification to help farmers in an industry which is not massively profitable and subject to risk and volatility. The latest figures from Defra show that farm business income has fallen for all farm types, except for specialist pig farms and specialist poultry farms.

Lines said that owing to the breach in trust over issues like the SFI, farmers could turn away from such programmes in the future and may look towards the marketplace for other more profitable activities.

He said, “Many are going to be incentivised to cover [their land] in solar panels or do other things that guarantee an income for the long term.”

Lines continued that many arable farmers are putting grass back down and hosting livestock, because in some landscapes it is now more dependable and the cost of infrastructure to put down vegetable and salad crops “is so expensive, with poor returns.”

Inheritance Tax

The loss of the SFI is the latest financial challenge to hit farmers in the past year, after the government introduced 20 percent inheritance tax on farms worth over £1 million from April 2026.

The government has said that this would affect only 500 farms each year and farm-owning couples can pass on up to £3 million without paying any inheritance tax.

However, farmers and parliamentarians have said that while farms can be asset rich, they are cash poor, and that far more farms than the government estimates will be impacted.

Farmers in tractors drive by Parliament ahead of a protest in central London over the changes to inheritance tax rules in the recent budget which introduce new taxes on farms worth more than £1 million in Westminster, London, on Nov. 19, 2024. Aaron Chown/PA Wire

Last week, the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) met with food security and rural affairs minister Daniel Zeichner to explain the impact that closing the SFI would have on farmers, and called on Defra to unlock the scheme to the thousands of farmers who had started applications and had already paid for and started environmental work on their land.

Following the roundtable, NFU President Tom Bradshaw said that the closure of the programme “is a devastating shock for farmers and leaves businesses on a knife edge when they were already struggling with the impact of the changes to inheritance tax.”

Bradshaw said members had told Zeichner that the decision “not only threatens the livelihoods of numerous farmers,” but “also undermines the ability of farm businesses to deliver environmental work” and had “crushed all trust in Defra.”

‘Record Number’ in Schemes

A government spokesperson told The Epoch Times: “We inherited farming schemes which were underspent, with farms missing out on millions of pounds.

“The government proudly secured the largest budget for sustainable food production in our country’s history. We now have record number of farmers into schemes and more money being paid to farms than ever before. As a result, we have now hit the maximum limit of the scheme and have stopped accepting new applications.”

The spokesperson added that the government will reopen a “new and improved SFI scheme,” with more details coming this summer.

The government has previously said that the former Conservative administration also did not give notice when closing previous iterations of the scheme.

However, during a debate in the House of Lords last week, Conservative peer Thomas Coke, the Earl of Leicester, said it was “disingenuous” to say the scheme had likewise been paused twice before, arguing that these previous programmes were pilot schemes, which were then rolled forward.