Defra pledges extra £1000 for

Payments risk being 'too little, too late'

Industry leaders have welcomed the extra money – but warn that lack of information continues to put farmers off joining the scheme.

NFU vice president David Exwood said: “Farmers and growers are making crucial longterm decisions that are essential to running viable and profitable food producing businesses without the vital clarity needed on ELM schemes and options that will be available.

“It is hugely frustrating that nearly five years on from Defra’s Health and Harmony consultation, which set farming in England on a path towards public goods for public payments, we still only have three standards available for the SFI.”

Mr Exwood added: “It’s a sad reflection of the scheme’s progress and development that NFU members know more about what they will lose in direct payments than what they will gain from taking part in these new schemes.”

To succeed, the ELM scheme needed to be simple, provide certainty and fairly reward farmers for taking part. This meant the SFI and other ELM schemes needed to be inclusive and available to every farm business – whether upland or lowland, tenant or owner-occupied.

A range of practical and profitable options would ensure the high uptake needed so these schemes had the desired impact, said Mr Exwood.

“Ministers must also demonstrate transparently how direct payments have been redirected to the ELM programme.” tal Land Management schemes and think about what options and grants

“As custodians of more than 70% of our countryside, the nation is relying on its farmers to protect our landscapes as well as produce the high-quality food ing payment rates to ensure farmers are not out of pocket for doing the right thing.”

Mr Spencer added: “By increasing the investment in these schemes, I want farmers to see this stacks up for business – whatever the size of your holding.”

The new payments will be backdated and make the scheme more attractive, especially to smaller, tenant farmers. The SFI was already paying farmers to improve soil and moorlands – and more standards would be published shortly.

In addition, farmers with a Countryside Stewardship (CS) agreement, of which there are now 30,000 across England, will see an average increase of 10% to their revenue payment rates – covering ongoing activity such as habitat management.

January started as we had hoped, busy! First call was to help with a bit of a serious wet spot problem at a well known racecourse. This was literally a patch up job until the hunt season is over and time allows to carry out more intense works. Thankfully the weather held for a few days but after that it got very soggy and even though we tried working off of boards it was a no go and in agreement with the client we pulled off site until the ground has had a chance to dry at least a wee bit.

The wet start to January highlighted quite a few problems for quite a few folks. With the ground being simply too wet to drain it gave us the opportunity to drop into a local coffee bean supplier who was being flooded. Not good when you have coffee beans to worry about.

No one had an idea of where the water was flooding in from but it soon became apparent it was the run off from the guttering and a blocked outlet to the soakaway which was constructed from brick and rubble. All very strange as the obvious place to send the rain run off would have been the pond about 15 metres away and not a soakaway made from rubbish!!