Farmers ‘betrayed again’ as Defra stops SFI applications

Defra has announced that as of yesterday, 11th March, the government has stopped accepting new applications for the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI24).  

Defra promised that “every penny” in all existing SFI agreements will be paid to farmers, and outstanding eligible applications that have been submitted will also be taken forward.

Its spokesperson added: “This government inherited farming schemes which were underspent, meaning millions of pounds were not going to farming businesses. At the budget, the government proudly secured the largest budget for sustainable food production in our country’s history, with £5 billion was committed in the farming budget over a two-year period. 

“As a result of the government’s determination to get more farmers to participate, there is now a record 50,000 farm businesses, and more than half of all farmed land is now managed under our schemes.  

“The largest of these schemes, SFI24, now has more than 37,000 multi-year live agreements and is not only delivering sustainable food production and nature’s recovery for today and the years ahead, but it is also putting money back into farmers pockets. ”

‘Right time for a reset’

Defra said that the government inherited “an uncapped scheme, despite a finite farming budget”, and the highest ever level of participation in SFI means the maximum limit has now been reached. 

“Therefore, as SFI has reached its completion, the government is stopping accepting new SFI applications today.

“Now is the right time for a reset: supporting farmers, delivering for nature and targeting public funds fairly and effectively towards our priorities for food, farming and nature. “

Minister for food security and rural affairs Daniel Zeichner said: “More farmers are now in schemes, and more money is being spent through them than ever before. That is true today and will remain true tomorrow. We have now successfully allocated the SFI24 budget as promised.”

‘Another shattering blow to English farms’

NFU president Tom Bradshaw said that the announcement is “another shattering blow to English farms”.

He added that the news was delivered “with no warning, no understanding of the industry, and a complete lack of compassion or care”.

“We have had major concerns for years about whether there was the capability within Defra to deliver the agricultural transition post-Brexit. We have warned time and time again that large parts of the SFI were poorly designed and that the department was consistently failing to deliver it.”

Mr Bradshaw said that the “terrible news” was delivered with only 30 minutes warning to NFU before ministers briefed the press, leaving the union unable to inform its members.

He continued: “There has been no consultation, no communication; there has been a total lack of the ‘partnership and co-design’ Defra loves to talk about. It is another example of the growing disregard for agriculture within the department.

“The fact that ministers are actually trumpeting this as good news shows how desperately detached they are from the reality on the ground and how little they understand this industry.

“It leaves us with little choice but to see Defra as a failing department. The chaos has got worse and worse, and farmers are paying the price. Bad decisions, misdirection, promises broken, no transparency and yet more financial disaster for farming.

“When the Chancellor dramatically accelerated the end of the old schemes for all farmers, it was on the promise that they would all be able to access the new ones, which paid them for doing environmental work. But the door has now been slammed shut for thousands of farmers, creating haves and have nots based purely on timing.

“They say the money is spent, but because Defra refuses to be transparent, we don’t know where it’s been spent, or whether it’s all been spent within this year.”

The NFU president added that farmers are now facing the “awful dilemma” of whether to turn their backs on environmental work and just farm as hard as they can to survive.

“This is a loss to both farming and the environment and cannot be what was intended.

“It is a bleak irony that we were set to reveal tomorrow that farming confidence in England and Wales has plummeted to its lowest level ever1 – lower than last year when those who are now Defra Ministers said it was a scandal and a disaster.

“If confidence was at rock bottom and investment through the floor yesterday, tomorrow it will be gone entirely,” he concluded.

‘Most forward-thinking agricultural policy’

Country Land and Business Association president Victoria Vyvyan said that SFI was the most ambitious, forward-thinking, and environmentally friendly agricultural policy seen anywhere in the world.

“It promised a fairer future for farmers and a greener future for the world. Labour promised to support it, but at the first available opportunity they have instead scrapped it.

“Of all the betrayals so far, this is the most cruel. It actively harms nature. It actively harms the environment. And, with war once again raging in Europe, to actively harm our food production is reckless beyond belief.”

Farmers left ‘frustrated and let down’

Martin Lines, CEO of the Nature Friendly Farming Network (NFFN), commented that while it is good news that so many farmers have been getting into agri-environment schemes, many more have been prevented from accessing SFI due to overly-complicated schemes that cannot be stacked together and the Rural Payments Agency (RPA) being slow to process applications and queries.

“With so much focus on SFI to deliver public goods compared to other parts of the Environment Land Management scheme (ELMs), it has become increasingly difficult for farmers to understand what they should do and where they fit in. Many farmers have been waiting months for the RPA to update applications and enable the annual declaration so that a new application can be stacked on top.

“Even worse, it is now clear that the new SFI offer will not be available until spring 2026. This leaves most farmers facing an 18-month gap before fresh SFI payments arrive, which is going to leave some of them in a really difficult financial position.

“This has left many farmers feeling frustrated and let down, with no clear opportunity to be rewarded for delivering public goods in the near future,” he concluded.

‘Adding to the uncertainty and insecurity’

Chairman of the EFRA Committee, Alistair Carmichael MP, said that the sudden announcement yesterday that the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) would cease to take new applications to the scheme, with immediate effect and with no prior warning, is “another very regrettable decision by Defra”.

He continued: “The abrupt halting of new applications to SFI will leave many farmers with no prospect of support to replace direct payments.

“Farmers are already under immense pressure from a perfect storm of adverse conditions. For many farmers, this latest move by the government will only add to the uncertainty and insecurity of their livelihoods and threaten their financial viability.  

“At a time when the government has deeply fractured its relationship with farmers, this decision on SFI only compounds the impression that the government either does not have a grasp of the realities that farmers face or is sanguine with the possibility of farms up and down the country going out of business, their land being sold off to other entities, and British farmland being lost to farming altogether.”

‘Pivotal to farm income and profitability’

Carter Jonas partner James Bradley added: “We were working on more than 30 SFI 2024 applications for our firm’s clients to submit, demonstrating the direct impact that this will have on farms. In 2025 there is a significant change in BPS payment values and these agreements would have been pivotal to farm income and profitability in 2025 and beyond.

“At best, landowners will have to wait until a new scheme is announced, which we hope will be very soon. At worst, changes to eligibility criteria will prevent businesses from entering, or a reduction in the value of options will mean that what was already financially quite marginal becomes unaffordable for farmers, who will be best advised not to apply.

“Many of our clients’ confidence in Defra will be knocked again by this announcement because it makes long-term planning difficult. The stated six-week notice of closure for applications was not given, mirroring the Capital Grant Scheme in 2024, meaning that the goalposts have moved without warning.”

Read more political news.