Labour's cuts to farming subsidies ‘threaten wildlife'

Telegraph

11-05-2025

Labour's cuts to farming subsidies will threaten wildlife and damage attempts to protect the rural environment, countryside campaigners have warned.
They fear that cuts in the payments could see farmers being forced to work their land more intensively to make up the shortfall.
The Government has announced that the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) – which rewards farmers for managing their land in a way that benefits the environment – is to be revised after the spending review in June.
This will see a cap placed on how much money farmers can receive.
Farmers and rural groups have warned the result will be to further endanger wildlife, their habitat and the environment, such as hedges and woodland.
Tim Bonner, chief executive of the Countryside Alliance, told The Telegraph: 'With no guarantee of income for work to improve the environment many are having to take the difficult decision to revert to more intensive farming operations to generate enough money to keep their businesses afloat.
'Ministers need to understand that the delivery of environmental benefits requires farms to be economically sustainable. Short term financial decisions like the closure of SFI will have huge consequences for the future of the countryside.
'Many generational farms with an absolute commitment to conservation and restoring biodiversity are already reeling from the Government's changes to inheritance tax. This new uncertainty over agri-environmental payments means their business plans are in tatters.'
David Exwood, deputy president of the National Farmers' Union, added: 'Fields that may have gone into non-farm use – such as a buffer strip or for winter bird seeds – won't happen. Farmers can't now leave those fields empty, because they are not going to get the subsidy which was paying for an environmental good any more. Without it there will be a direct impact on the environment.'
Nearly 95 per cent of farmers had been planning to make new applications to the SFI, which aims to encourage sustainable food production while protecting and enhancing nature, before they were unexpectedly closed, according to a survey by the Country Land and Business Association.
Under the SFI, which had run since 2021, farmers were eligible to receive payments from the Government for carrying out sustainable work.
They could apply to any of over one hundred contracts, which included measures like hedgerow maintenance, soil analysis, reducing insecticide use and managing grasslands.
These replaced payments made under the EU's Common Agricultural Policy which were based on the amount of land farmed and tended to encourage intensive farming.
In some cases SFI payments were modest, such as £257 a year for pond management. Others were more lucrative and went some way to make up for low prices paid by supermarkets for farmers' produce.
They also compensated for the scrapping of the old Basic Payment Scheme, which provided a vital supplement for hill farmers and crofters.
Joe Evans, vice president of the Country Land and Business Association said: 'The UK Government rightly replaced subsidies with new schemes that pay farmers to transition farming practices to becoming more sustainable, as well as providing direct environmental benefits.
'The transition was going well, with more and more farmers planning their futures around nature-friendly food production. In closing the biggest scheme without a word of warning, trust that the Government is acting in good faith has been damaged.
'40 per cent of our members weren't in the scheme but were planning to apply.
'This will cause a major cash flow crisis for thousands of businesses who have already been hit hard by other policy changes; but perhaps even more fundamentally, will stall progress in reversing nature decline and climate change.
'Without it, farmers will have to do what they need to do to survive – which may include farming much more intensively, harming the goal of sustainable food production.'
Farmers have told The Telegraph they fear the cuts in environmental subsidies will have a dire impact on their attempts to safeguard nature.
Annie Brown, a third-generation arable and livestock farmer in the South Downs, said her small family farm will suffer if their SFI payments end.
Ms Brown's farm currently receives £50,000 a year in SFI payments, but these contracts are set to run out by 2027.
'This is the death knell of a lot of family farms,' she warned. 'We are resilient and we don't take much out of the business, but we need some support, and we need to know it'll be there for the foreseeable future.
'It takes us from actually making some money which we invest in the business to going cap in hand to the bank.
'The tapestry of our countryside is really under threat at the moment. You batten down the hatches, you don't invest. Some farmers will go under.'
Ms Brown, 65 prides herself on taking a regenerative approach to farming on the 625 hectare holding she runs with her sister Pauline. But she says they will have to stop some of the sustainable measures which SFI payments allowed them to do, like soil sampling.
'The old adage of farmers in the red can't be green is true,' she said.
The Government defended the changes to the sustainable farming subsidies.
A spokesperson for the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs said: 'We inherited farming schemes which were underspent, with farms missing out on millions of pounds.
'This Government is investing £5 billion into farming – the largest budget for sustainable food production in our country's history.
'We now have a record number of farmers into schemes and more money being paid to farms than ever before.
'Every penny in all existing SFI agreements will be paid to farmers, and the Government will reopen a new and improved SFI scheme with more details coming this summer.'