New payments method will require a shift in thinking for many farmers

OVER the next few years, farmers are going to experience a fundamental shift in agricultural support, and they should start planning for this change now.

Funds will be diverted away for direct support payments, currently paid via the Basic Payment Scheme (BPS), towards schemes that will deliver “public goods” for which the government is prepared to pay.

Until now, farmers have been able to utilise the payments received from the BPS to support their existing farming businesses.

In the future, farmers will be expected to farm their land in a sustainable and profitable manner, complying with all basic regulations without any public support. These basic regulations are likely to become tougher.

This will require a shift in thinking for many farmers who will need to adapt their business models over the transition period between 2021 to 2027 as the direct payments are reduced to nothing by 2028. For some farmers, this will mean the difference between profit and loss but for all farmers it will represent a loss of income.

Therefore, farmers will need to assess the impact of this change on their business and as part of that process, one of the options to consider is enhancing one’s income by being paid to deliver public goods.

The public goods which the government will be prepared to pay for are:

Clean & plentiful water;

Clean air;

Protection from and mitigation of environmental hazards;

Mitigation of and adaptation to climate change;

Thriving plants and wildlife; Beauty, heritage and engagement.

These public goods will be delivered through a variety of grants and schemes, some of which are already in existence such as Countryside

Stewardship, while others are being piloted, such as the government’s flagship offer which is called Environmental Land Management (ELM).

ELM is being piloted at the moment and will be gradually introduced as follows:

Sustainable Farming Incentive - this should be available from 2022 and will pay for environmentally sustainable land management actions that all farmers can do.

Local Nature Recovery – this will start to be rolled out in 2024 to pay farmers and land managers for actions that support local nature recovery and delivery of local environmental priorities.

Landscape Recovery – this will involve bespoke agreements to support long-term, landscape scale land use change projects, including rewilding where appropriate. This will be made available from 2024 and this is likely to involve co-operation between farmers and landowners to achieve the desired outcomes.

This may all seem rather abstract to some, but farmers are urged to look very carefully at what their business will look like as BPS payments begin to dwindle to nothing by 2028 and take advantage of that transition period to plan for a new era.

James Stephen, Carter Jonas