Government subsidies or environmental posturing? The truth about SFI

The SFI scheme is neither “sustainable”, nor about farming

Bread riots, famines, blights - any lover of history knows that great powers have risen and fallen off the back of food prices. When the cost of food and the cost of living goes up, desperation ripples through society. There’s no more fundamental political question than how to ensure food security and abundance. Since Brexit, we’ve returned that question to Westminster and Whitehall. However, DEFRA’s Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) scheme demonstrates that this government is more concerned with environmental posturing than serious farming policy.

The SFI is a collection of initiatives which farmers can sign up to to receive DEFRA subsidies. They are typically long-term projects that last up to 3 years. Some of them are uncontroversial: maintaining dry stone walls; managing hedgerows; controlling scrub on historic and archaeological features. However, the bulk of the projects are centred on reserving arable land for flower species and allowing bird and insect populations to proliferate. The financial incentives are pretty hefty - for instance, planting a “bumblebird mix” on arable land or temporary grassland can earn a farm £747 per hectare per year. Keeping cereal crops unharvested for three-quarters of the year can fetch £1,072 at the same rate. Considering that the average English farm size is 88 hectares, the scheme creates scope for rather large subsidies. Since the scheme was expanded back in January, over twenty-three thousand farmers have signed up to the scheme.

Food must come from somewhere

It’s no secret that green initiatives end up squeezing food output - just look at the nitrogen elimination plans in the Netherlands. Indeed, farmers in this country were quick to catch on to the implications of paying farms not to plant productive crops. In late March, DEFRA introduced a cap of 25% on the land that farmers could use for SFI’s more intensive projects. This was touted as “reaffirming how our environmental land management schemes work alongside food production.” Since then, ten project types have been made subject to that cap. 

Despite the March changes, a few issues still remain. Firstly, 25% is still an enormous proportion of land. A potential 25% drop in farm productivity would be disastrous to the economy, only aggravating the government’s cost of living crisis. As precious as birds and insects may be, they shouldn’t trump our duty to our fellow citizens. Secondly, not all of the growth-hitting projects have been affected by the March changes. “Regenerating scrub cover” and “growing tussocky grass for beetle banks”, to give a couple of examples, are still uncapped. Finally - and most importantly - DEFRA is expanding the range of incentives in July, introducing twenty-three new projects for farmers to sign up to. It’s unclear whether any of these projects will be subject to any cap. With financial pressures only mounting on farmers, it’s easy to see why many might choose to pursue these subsidies instead of using the land the way their ancestors envisioned. Subsidies that are once again covered by taxes rather than economic production.

Regardless, this shouldn’t be the way forward for the farming industry. We can’t have our high-value arable land converted wholesale into glorified biology projects. SFI certainly isn’t farming, and it isn’t sustainable in the slightest. Rampant money printing and shocks to global supply chains have demonstrated how fragile our economy really is. We cannot have the government constraining supplies and hiking prices ever further upwards in order to satisfy its abstract “commitments”.

Farming is under attack in the West, by those who don't understand it

From my time working in the European Parliament I noted that many large institutions, such as the European Commission, have adopted a rather toxic strain of thinking which conceives of organic, home-grown food as a luxury preserve. If we follow the Netherlands’ path and keep reducing outputs in the name of the climate emergency, there is a good chance we could lose farms, jobs and healthy eating for good. Take Ireland’s example, which is even closer to home. Only last year, its Minister for Agriculture admitted that meeting EU-imposed emissions targets might mean culling 65,000 dairy cows over a three-year period, amounting to 10% of the livestock being wiped out. Policy like that being bandied around means that something is deeply wrong.

Many in this country might have hoped that leaving the EU would mean a lighter-touch regime. After all, Mr Sunak made a show of “shredding” reams of paper labelled “EU Red Tape”; “EU Bureaucracy” and “EU Legislation” in his leadership campaign video. However, our government has chosen to move in lockstep with Brussels and more. Lest we forget, the Conservative Party aims to reduce carbon emissions by 68% by 2030 compared to 1990 levels - the most stringent target in Europe. By comparison, Reform UK has taken a more practical approach to agricultural policy. It has committed to redirect government subsidies back into productive land use. Treasury money should not be funnelled into any of these climate subsidies - it should be paid directly to farmers, allowing them to keep on growing. This proposal, alongside a boost in the farming budget to £3 billion, would revitalise the sector, saving it from the failed trusteeship of the Tory Party. Schemes like SFI, meanwhile, reveal just how distorted this government’s concerns have become. 

Christopher Clowes is Reform UK's parliamentary candidate for Rutland and Stamford, along with South West Lincolnshire and East Leicestershire.