Written by Alastair Leake, Director of Policy and Head of The Allerton Project
Just last month I was admiring the display of Cowslips in one of our field margins. These were not sown here by us but have rejuvenated themselves from the seedbank from the days long ago when this field was grazed pasture. The field strip is funded under our Mid-Tier Environmental Stewardship Scheme which comes to an end in December. We, and 14,000 other agreement holders, face the same predicament. Back in 2020 I recall imploring farmers at every opportunity to sign-up for 5-year Countryside Stewardship agreements in the belief this would protect their incomes and nature, while the teething problems of the SFI were ironed out and the RPA got to grips with new scheme software. Then, at the end of the 5 years they could glide into the new, fully functioning Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI), through to at least 2028, the “transition” period.
Clearly my optimism was misplaced. The scheme is currently shut, and my Cowslips look like they may have flowered for the last time, before being up-ended and swamped with winter wheat, along with the legume leys, wild bird cover, arable reversion and pollen & nectar strips which help to sustain the abundant wildlife the Allerton Project farm supports. I re-imagine the landscape as it looked 30 years ago when the crops met seamlessly with the flayed down hedges before we gave nature some space and saw our songbird numbers double.
Ministers hail the now shut scheme a success – it was so popular that the stampede to join meant the cash in the vault has been emptied and the door slammed shut. But it’s not good for the farming community as a whole, or even for nature and the provision of “Public Goods”, that some farmers have secured a lot of money and others nothing.
And the scheme is, for the most part, good – and so it should be because Defra promised stakeholders that their views would be listened to in a process they called “co-design”. Listen they did (eventually), which meant the things we knew people didn’t like about previous schemes were largely avoided.
Yesterday’s Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) announcement took even the most optimistic of us by surprise - we really were expecting it would signal a farewell to the Cowslips. The Treasury have committed further funding to support nature on farms at a time when the mood music from government was that nature was less important and must come second to development. So this is not the bad news we had prepared for. Now what we must do is to improve what is a good scheme, ensuring that the resources allocated to it are more evenly spread and distributed such that it’s not constantly opening and closing with the ebb and flow of funds, with all the uncertainty that brings.
There are some things we could do then to make the scheme better. We know from previous schemes that around 70% of farmers and landowners are likely to engage, but that could increase given the SFI is better than previous iterations and there is no longer any other support payment. Limiting the amount of money any single applicant can claim on a pro rata acreage basis is a possibility. I’m not enthusiastic about an absolute cap – large landowners need to be able to spread measures across the landscape, but some limits on the extent of individual options funded might be sensible too – nature needs refuge and sustenance to be dotted across the landscape rather than in excessive monocultures which more suit agricultural efficiency than wildlife. Excluding applicants based on landscape or geography is not a great idea either: it will just result in areas of nature deprivation.
Defra are currently working on this. Next week Mike Rowe takes over to steer the SFI to its next stage. Let’s hope one CSR leads to another and Cowslips Secure Reprieve.