‘Payment by results’ success for farmers

A PIONEERING land management scheme in Yorkshire where farmers are paid by results rather than being forced to follow a set of prescriptive rules could be used more widely after achieving ‘amazing success’.

The results of the new EU funded approach, operating in Wensleydale and Norfolk since 2015, were revealed at a conference in the Yorkshire Dales.

The ‘payment by results’ scheme was due to finish at the end of this year but will now become the first ever agri-environmental scheme to be directly funded by the UK Government.

According to the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority, one of the senior civil servants tasked with designing a new post Brexit Environmental Land

Management system said his department was “really interested” to explore the potential for expanding on the model.

Under more conventional schemes, the work the land manager should carry out is prescribed to them, with a fixed payment at the end of the year. Critics say this leads to an increasing burden of evidence required to prove that that the management has been undertaken.

Under ‘payment by results’ there are comparatively few rules, meaning decision-making is left to the farmers and less record-keeping is required.

The Wensleydale part of the pilot – where farmers are paid to produce species rich hay meadows, or good habitat for wading birds – has been run by the Dales park authority farm team.

At the conference, farm conservation adviser Helen Keep said data from the first two years of the scheme showed there had been an “amazing increase in species frequency” in local meadows.

Twelve of the 19 farmers in the scheme had produced hay meadows that had gone up at least one payment band – meaning that the fields had become more species rich – with only one farmer going down a band.

Ms Keep said: “We feel that this project has been a success. We’ve got engaged farmers, enthusiastic farmers, gaining confidence. And most importantly, there’s an element of trust here and I think that has been lost in the conventional approaches to agri-environment schemes.”

Earlier this year, Environment Secretary Michael Gove announced plans to end direct payments based on the amount of land farmed after the UK leaves the European Union. Instead, farmers will receive money for “public goods”, such as investment in sustainable food production.