‘Hedge fund’ for farmers to double reward for going green

Post-brexit incentives to help environment criticised by campaigners for doing the ‘bare minimum’

CASH incentives for farmers to create hedgerows are to be doubled amid a slow take-up for the Government’s post-brexit green schemes.

Farmers will also be given up to £1,000 for joining the most basic of the projects, which are replacing the European Union’s £2.4billion subsidy regime.

However, green groups warned that ministers were watering down the ambitions of the post-eu plans, which were intended to pay farmers for projects that provide public benefits to the environment.

Farming groups also criticised a lack of clarity on the future of the schemes, which they say is prompting farmers to intensify damaging food production while prices for milk and wheat are high.

The National Farmers’ Union said that the changes “risk being too little too late”, and criticised a continued lack of certainty over the future of the schemes, which have undergone several reviews during recent political turmoil.

Martin Lines, chairman of the Nature Friendly Farming Network, said: “Farmers are reacting to the market they can see and intensifying their production, which has negative impacts for the environment.

“They are looking at how they can maximise some crop production and increase livestock numbers.”

The Government wants the most basic element of the post-eu scheme, known as the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI), to attract 70 per cent of the roughly 200,000 farms in England by 2028.

But only around 1,980 farmers have applied to the scheme, with just 1,570 active agreements.

The Government hopes the new “management payment” of £20 per hectare, up to £1,000, will attract more farmers into the scheme.

But there are fears the payment will simply reward farmers for holding land without any additional benefit for the environment.

Prof Ian Bateman, from the University of Exeter, who helped devise the post-brexit payments known as Environmental land management schemes said (ELMS), said: “Uniform, flat-rate payments such as this give no incentive to those farmers who want to do the best for the environment when those doing the bare minimum get exactly the same payment.”

Dustin Benton, of the Green Alliance think tank, said: “ELMS isn’t just about getting farmers to sign up, it’s about delivering on public goods.”

The Government has yet to say exactly how ELMS will contribute to its statutory targets to halt the decline in species by 2030, as well as reduce water and air pollution, and cut carbon emissions

‘Flat-rate payments give no incentive to those farmers who want to do the best for the environment’

78 per cent by 2035. A new range of actions that farmers can be paid for is expected to be announced later this month. But green farming groups fear the Government is in the process of watering down the ambition of the ELMS scheme, and will allow farmers to take minimum actions that they say will not help the UK reach its targets to improve nature.

In plans announced yesterday, the Government said it would increase payment rates for specific green actions by farmers, amid rising costs for farmers in the wake of the war in Ukraine.

Payments for the creation of hedgerows, which attract birds on farmland, improve soil erosion and increase carbon capture, will be doubled.

Payment for actions such as sowing strips of land with bird seed mix and creating scrubland will be increased by 10 per cent on average.