Farming Minister fails to offer reassurance on the future of SFI

The Farming Minister wants to look to the future, but could not offer any indication of what that future will look like.

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That was the overriding message from the industry roundtable ‘emergency' meeting with the Farming Minister Daniel Zeichner held on March 17. The meeting was organised to discuss the fall out from Defra's decision last week to pull the plug on new applications for the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) without notice.

Sustainable Farming Incentive 

NFU attended the meeting alongside a range of industry stakeholders from across the farming sectors including farming consultants dealing directly with farmers' SFI applications. NFU president Tom Bradshaw said he was 'shocked' to hear the disregard in the Minister's opener, about how badly the announcement had landed in the farming industry.

"It is fair to say that the Minister talked about not upsetting the apple cart and I may have referenced that the apple cart had been filled with dynamite and blown up and that was the way the industry was feeling."

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He said there was ‘too much willingness' from the Minister to talk about what happens next with SFI, rather than reflecting on the reality of the situation right now, with ‘thousands' of farmers trapped within the system that have got open applications, but now without notice were shut out of applying to SFI.

When probed about any discussions around the proposed ‘redesign' of SFI, Mr Bradshaw said there was ‘confused messaging', but said the Minister inferred it would be a ‘two-step process'.

Defra

"On one hand Daniel Zeichner said the Secretary of State was keen to work at pace and have a scheme available in the summer.

"But then said a more thorough scheme redesign will take longer than that. Whether they are looking at a two-step process, whether they look at opening the scheme after the Comprehensive Spending Review. I just do not know."

Spring Statement 

When asked if the abrupt suspension of SFI was an indication of further budgets to come, Mr Bradshaw admitted he was ‘really worried' about what the outcome of next week's spending review would be.

"I think it is very difficult to speculate today what the future is for public money for public goods and what the future contracts with farming and society are going to look like.

Funding 

"If they do not find the funding, I do not know how they [the Government] are going to meet environmental legislative targets, but also I do not know how farming is going to deliver the investment its going to need to deliver the food security for the future."

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He questioned how far in advance Defra knew about the budget allocation for SFI, adding that it demanded the department to provide this information. 

Budget transparency 

"If we all had transparency of that budget, then we would have known what we were working towards. And it feels like to me, it was not set in stone for months ahead. We need to get transparency on when the budget was made, and why it was not shared with the farming industry."

He said whilst there is a ‘sincerity' from the Farming Minister to work at pace with SFI redesign, the spending review will ‘massively get in the way of this'.

Scheme redesign 

"But until we get on the other side of that [spending review] it is going to be very difficult to see what future schemes look like.

"It is just not how quickly they can redesign it, it is when will they have the budget available. There is a lot of questions that we still have after today. I respect that the Minister came and everyone had the opportunity to get things off their chest, but I cannot give the industry confidence today that we know what is happening in 2,3, 5 months' time."

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When asked about his thoughts on the Defra Secretary Steve Reed not attending the meeting, Mr Bradshaw said he thought he could have showed face. 

"He has obviously chosen that its farming policy and its Daniel's area."

Tenant farmers

Tenant farmer George Renner, who was representing the Tenant Farmers Association at the meeting said despite indication that a ‘stripped back version' of the current SFI would be available this summer, with a more ‘fundamental redesign next year', the commitments from the Farming Minister was still ‘very woolly'.

"I can say their intention is for a scheme to launch at some point, their intention is the gap will not be too long, but there was no commitment to time scale, or vision as to what the scheme might look like."

Budget overspend 

Mr Renner said the Farming Minister shared that when he came into the office in day 1, he knew SFI was in an ‘overspend situation', but then later in the meeting he said he did not know that the budget had run out until last week.

"I have no certainty what I should do with my business. I have no more certainty now as before I went into that meeting. I would not like to second guess, what the Government could come up with because it seems they do not understand the industry, and do not understand what they want from the industry," Mr Renner said.

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He said when Mr Zeichner was quizzed by various groups about the impact on those farmers who were given no warning of SFI closing, he said the minister inferred that farmers should have applied sooner.

"The broad message that came out is that they should have applied sooner, no sympathy, or understanding of the problems that this was going to cause," Mr Renner said.

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