I am writing to you today to let you know that we have published The Path to Sustainable Farming: An Agricultural Transition Plan 2021 to 2024. This will offer farmers the details that they need in order to plan for the coming years.
By breaking away from the Common Agriculture Policy, each nation of the UK now has the opportunity to do things differently. In England, we will support farmers to improve the environment, improve animal health and welfare and reduce carbon emissions.
We will support farmers to produce high quality food in a more sustainable way and improve transparency in the supply chain to help food producers strengthen their position at the farm gate and seek a fairer return from the marketplace. We will also help them to reduce their costs and improve their profitability, and help those who want to retire or leave the industry to do so with dignity, and to create new opportunities and support for new entrants coming into the industry.
Over the last century, much of our wildlife-rich habitat has been lost, and many species are in long-term decline. I know that many farmers feel this loss keenly and are taking measures to reverse this decline; but we cannot deny that the intensification of agriculture since the 1960s has taken its toll on wildlife. To address this, we need to rediscover some of the agronomic techniques that my Great Grandfather might have deployed, but then fuse them with the best precision technology and plant science available to us today. I am confident that the changes set out today will help us deliver for nature. At the same time, our plans for future farming must tackle climate change.
Levels of support for sustainable farming practices
The centre piece of our future policy will be made up of three component parts. Elements of the new policy will be universally open to all farmers, while others will be more targeted.
• The Sustainable Farming Incentive will pay for farmers for actions that they take to manage their land in an environmentally sustainable way.
• Local Nature Recovery will pay farmers for actions that support local nature recovery and deliver local environmental priorities.
• Landscape Recovery will support the delivery of landscape and ecosystem recovery through long-term, land use change projects.
We won’t be introducing this overnight. Between 2021 and 2024, we will help farmers prepare to take part in our Environmental Land Management offer. This will include extensions to Countryside Stewardship and Environmental Stewardship, for those who already have an agreement, new Countryside Stewardship agreements, for those who want to undertake a wider range of more ambitious environmental activities, the Environmental Land Management Pilot and core elements of our Sustainable Farming Incentive, available to all farmers from 2022 onwards.
Grants
We will be making a significant number of grants available to support farmers in reducing their costs and improving their profitability, to help those who want to retire or leave the industry to do so with dignity, and to create new opportunities and support for new entrants coming into the industry.
We will provide grants for Research and Development, and we will be establishing an Animal Health and Welfare Pathway.
Advice and enforcement
The dysfunctional, top-down rules and draconian penalties that were a feature of the EU era will be struck down or reformed. There will be a modern approach to regulation with more holistic assessments of regulatory compliance and with greater emphasis on advice and improvement so that farmers and regulators work together to improve standards.
We will help farmers through the transition, including with business planning, training and advice. We to help farmers manage the inherent risks of producing food, such as the weather and market volatility, while knowing that the Government has the powers in law to intervene in exceptional market conditions.
Direct Payments
We will phase out Direct Payments in a smooth and orderly way, starting in 2021, with the last Direct Payments being made in 2027. We will invest the money that we free up in a better way. Whilst farmers will see their Direct Payments fall, they will have the opportunity to access new schemes as that happens.
We recognise that there is currently great reliance on the area based subsidy payments, so we will change things gradually throughout the agricultural transition. This will be an evolution from the old system to the new, not an overnight revolution. As the legacy payments are wound down, the money released will be made available for a broad range of new schemes. Rather than the prescriptive, top down rules of the EU era, we want to support the choices that farmers and land managers take on their holdings, and we will work with them to refine and develop the schemes we bring forward.
If we work together to get this right, then a decade from now the rest of the world will want to follow our lead.
RT HON GEORGE EUSTICE MP