Published: 21/05/2024 By George Whittaker
Full details of the expanded and improved Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) offer available to farmers from July have been published by the government today (Tuesday 21 May).The new SFI offer will be open to new entrants for the first time (i.e. those who never claimed through BPS) and will initially comprise 102 actions, including over 20 new options to support more sustainable food production.
Payments will include options for precision farming, agroforestry, a new and expanded offer for upland farmers and more actions for tenants on short-term contracts.
More than 50 simplified actions from Mid-Tier Countryside Stewardship will merge into SFI to streamline the application process. They include a number of actions where durations have been reduced from 5 to 3 years to align with the needs of tenant farmers.
Timescale - Expressions of interest have now opened for those wishing to apply through the controlled roll out, ahead of the offer being fully self-service in July. The RPA will then choose a select number of individuals to test the service and submit an application before they open the new offer to the wider sector, which will be available to all from 22nd July 2024.
Further Limits on non-Food producing options - To safeguard domestic food production, the RPA have placed a limit on the total area of land that a business could enter 6 specific, non-food producing options into. That limit is 25%, and has been increased to include the following 4 options –
- WBD3 - in-field grass strips
- AHW9 - unharvested cereal headland
- AHW1 - bumblebird mix
- AHW11 - cultivated areas for arable plants
