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How the shock closure of SFI applications has affected nature-friendly farmers

England
Policy & Views
Defra
ELM
Environmental Land Management scheme
Farming budget
Government
policy

Defra's abrupt closure of the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) to new applications after its funding was exhausted has stunned the farming world, throwing many farmers' plans for the future into chaos. We've been speaking to our NFFN members to understand how they have been impacted by the sudden announcement.

Joanne Coates, Moorhen Farm, North Yorkshire

We've only recently taken over the running of our upland farm, so we wanted to test the waters with schemes like the SFI before making a full commitment (as you would with any business!). We submitted two relatively small applications - for herbal leys and hedgerows - because we aimed to create smaller fields with more natural divides. 

Our plan was to evaluate how things progressed before expanding our applications to cover more of our farm. The herbal leys and hedgerows have thrived, so if the SFI hadn't been shut down, we would have applied for much more support. Our goal is to encourage biodiversity - more plant species, bumblebees, birds, bats, and butterflies. Seeing nature flourish on our farm is incredibly important to us both. With careful planning, we were considering how all these changes could benefit not just our land but also the wider community. I even attended a hedge-laying course to develop new skills.

We are committed to making significant environmental changes. This is the future of farming, and we are the new generation. But it feels like that opportunity has been taken away. Farmers are constantly told they need to operate like businesses, but businesses need the ability to plan.

We were approaching this transition carefully, making small changes first to ensure they worked before scaling up. Now, that cautious and sustainable approach is at risk. As a hill farm, we're particularly concerned because financial constraints make change even more challenging.

Everything we want to do is about improving our soil, landscapes, and overall environmental impact. Nature-friendly farming is the only way forward for us. We need clear direction from the government on what kind of farming it wants to support and how it plans to provide the necessary backing.

We are committed to making significant environmental changes. This is the future of farming - but it feels like that opportunity has been taken away.

Joanne Coates

We will continue finding ways to make changes, but hope is key. In my off-farm work in community engagement, I’ve learned that the worst thing you can do is make promises and then not follow through, because it destroys people’s ability to hope. Right now, I fear that hope is fading in the rural sector.

Most importantly, our farm’s changes weren’t just for us. They were about making a real difference for nature, the climate, and the wider environment. Shutting down SFI disrupts that progress at a time when we should be doing more, not less.

I keep seeing articles saying farmers are furious. I’m not angry - just deeply saddened. This feels like a big missed opportunity, not just for farmers but for the whole of England.


Anna Biesty, Deepdale Farm, Norfolk

We're in the final year of a five-year Countryside Stewardship (CS) Mid-Tier agreement. This was absolutely vital for us as we have put land which had been intensively farmed and had degraded soil into stewardship. It ensured the farm was financially viable while we rested our land and repaired our soil.

We had been preparing to apply for SFI at the end of our current Mid-Tier agreement. Now that's not going to be available to us, I'm looking at a £140,000 gap in our budget for next year, which terrifies me.

We're trying to make decisions with a fraction of the details that we need, and which are just not there. We now don't know what we are going to do, and whether we will have to put more of our land back into food production than we had intended. 

We thought we had a balance between crop growing and nature for next year which we were happy with and sat comfortably with us, but now we don't know if that's going to be viable. We know we want to go forward fully on board both with nature-friendly farming and being organic because that's how we secure the future of our most important natural asset, our soil.

You spend time making plans based on the best information you have, but then that plan becomes pointless. It's a waste of time and that must be multiplied all around the country, whether it's farmers or nature charities who are managing land and using similar schemes.

After the reductions in the Basic Payment Scheme (BPS) and the removal of Agricultural Property Relief, capital grants and now SFI, it just feels like we are being punched at from every angle possible.

Amelia Greenway, Springwater Farm, Devon

We missed out on submitting our SFI claim by 48 hours. We were just about to submit our application after several months of preparation. We have definitely missed out on £80,000 of funding, and it could have been as high as £94,000.

We were planning to apply for multiple things. We were going to go for the low-input harvest cereal crop option, which we would have used to start producing our own organic pig feed. We wanted to grow oats, peas and barley in a no-till organic arable system with some wildflower mixes which we would have left for the pollinators. We now can't do that at all because we can't afford the seed. It would have been a really good thing for nature and for our pig enterprise, and it would have made our farming system more circular by reducing our dependence on inputs.

We were also planning to apply for the native breed supplement because we have 150 head of Highland cattle, and we were going to go for the agroforestry payment because we've just put 150 acres into agroforestry. There are also other wood pasture blocks on our farm and we could have claimed for all of those.  These are all schemes we are currently implementing because we believe in nature-friendly farming and think it is the best system for both food and nature. 

We were going to start producing our own organic pig feed, growing oats, peas and barley in a no-till organic arable system with wildflower mixes we would have left for the pollinators. It would have been a really good thing for nature and made our farming system more circular by reducing our dependence on inputs, but we now can't do that at all because we can't afford the seed.

Amelia Greenway

This is a real hit for us, financially we are losing out massively. Our business, which is currently not reliant on subsidies, was going to have some money for reinvestment. We were really excited to have that opportunity to buy more cattle and put more money into the pig business. Our tractor, which we use for everything from hay and silage making to hauling timber when involved in conservation forestry work on the estate, also needs four new tyres and could do with replacing, and now we haven't got the money to do that either.

Fortunately our landlords, the National Trust, have been very supportive of us. I just hope the loss of SFI isn't going to lead to farmers burying their heads in the sand. With this lack of security we're all feeling, we have to start looking at our finances and margins and be really honest about what is and isn't making money. The Government is saying they will bring back SFI but we don't know when that is going to be, so in my view we can't be in a position of relying on the Government.

We're still organic and we are still going to farm in a way that supports nature, but this has really stopped us from delivering what we would otherwise have been able to do.

David Lord, Earls Hall Farm, Essex

With current low commodity prices, we have used SFI24 to de-risk a move to more nature-friendly farming practices that, while they reduce our growing costs, will also reduce our yields and revenue. The options we selected, particularly the low-input spring cereal, were going to be used to transition our farming system and improve our soil health for long-term resilience, growing mainly human-consumption, conservation-grade cereals.

If we do not get this agreement, planned habitats and these more nature-friendly systems will be cancelled, as we will have to try to maintain profits the old-fashioned way. Some land may not be farmed or managed at all in an attempt to minimise losses.

Many colleagues were planning on using this scheme to move to a more nature-friendly system, having been watching and learning from other farmers. The scheme represented excellent value for money in the changes it was incentivising, and momentum was building. All that will be lost, along with much of the varied and diverse wildlife it supported.

We also have a mid-tier Countryside Stewardship (CS) agreement which ends in September 2025. In the absence of any SFI agreement or alternative scheme, the habitats, including flower-rich field corners, wild bird food mixes, nectar flower margins and tussocky grass margins, will likely be destroyed and brought back into production.

We had plans to invest in some machinery specific to nature-friendly farming, and also in a rotational grazing livestock enterprise, but in light of the IHT changes and the total loss of trust following the SFI withdrawal, we are no longer in a position to do this.

David Lord

This will hamper any chance of this Government meeting its environmental targets. The UK is 70% farmland and achieving landscape-level change to meet environmental targets means engaging and incentivising every farmer to make a difference.

With cash flow massively hindered by the loss of the Basic Payments Scheme (BPS), SFI and CS, we will be receiving approximately £100,000 less per annum, which will more than halve our annual average profit. With three older partners in the business, the inheritance tax (IHT) proposals will also leave us with a tax bill that, at current profitability levels, will take a generation to pay off.

We had plans to invest in some machinery and grain-handling facilities specific to nature-friendly farming, and also in a rotational grazing livestock enterprise, but in light of the IHT changes and the total loss of trust following the SFI withdrawal, we are no longer in a position to do this.

We are no longer a business planning to grow, employ more people, provide income for local businesses and produce local, nature-friendly food. With thousands of farms in the same position across the country, you have stagnation, negative rural growth, loss of employment, and a total lack of incentive for any younger people or new entrants to enter the farming industry.

In terms of SFI, any farmers without agreements, especially those who may have been attempting to apply, have to be given access to the SFI24 scheme, even if it is with some kind of cap. Many farmers will have been unable to apply due to CS schemes ending or admin issues within the Rural Payments Agency (RPA). This is not their fault.

The loss of habitat as schemes go past their end date with nothing to replace them is a concern. Without the incentive to manage these habitats, many farmers will resort to bringing them back into production. To prevent this, we urgently need sight of this Government's replacement policy. If this looks appealing, some farmers will forgo some income to wait for a new scheme.

The shocking fallout from the imposition of IHT and the loss of environmental payments has come at a time when profitability in farming is at an all-time low. We need to see responsible leadership from all sides to make sure our farming industry is not fatally wounded. In the presence of so much global unrest and climatic instability, our ability to feed our own nation must not be underestimated.

Jon Thornes, South Ormsby Estate, Lincolnshire

Looking at where we are now, it’s hard to argue that the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) has truly delivered for nature. Instead of creating long-term, meaningful environmental improvements, the scheme has encouraged short-term, box-ticking solutions, often rewarding actions with limited ecological value.

From the start, SFI was designed more as a soft landing for farmers losing BPS rather than a genuine nature recovery scheme. With uncapped budgets and high-paying options that required little actual change, large sums of money have been spent with questionable results. Some whole farms were put into single, high-paying options that delivered little beyond securing short-term cashflow, rather than fostering integrated, sustainable farming systems.

SFI hasn’t protected nature, hasn’t secured a sustainable farming future and has undermined trust in future schemes. We need something better, something built on real outcomes.

Jon Thornes

Now, with the scheme halted due to budget pressures, those who did make changes are left in limbo, while many others have seen this as confirmation that government support for nature-friendly farming is unreliable. The biggest losers are the farmers who genuinely wanted to transition towards regenerative agriculture but have been led up the garden path, again.

Had this money been invested differently: targeting genuine landscape-scale change, supporting proven biodiversity improvements, or even helping develop long-term nature-friendly supply chains, there might have been a lasting impact. Instead, we’re left with a funding crisis, lost confidence, and the likelihood that many will return to input-heavy, intensive systems just to stay afloat.

Would we have been better off without SFI? In most cases, yes. It hasn’t protected nature, it hasn’t secured a sustainable farming future, and it has undermined trust in future schemes. We need something better, something built on real outcomes, not short-term political fixes.