The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has today (Tuesday, June 30) opened its first application window for this year's Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) scheme.

Defra stated that a budget of £60 million has been set aside for this application window, with any unspent funding set to be carried forward to the second window.

The first window is currently only open to small farms with between 3ha and 50ha of agricultural land and farms that do not have an existing Environmental Land Management (ELM) agreement.

The department outlined that SFI pays farmers to carry out "practical, on-farm actions" that support sustainable food production while also improving the environment.

Defra

Defra highlighted that its goal for SFI26 was to make the scheme "simpler, fairer and more accessible than ever before".

Speaking about this year's scheme, Defra Secretary of State, Emma Reynolds said: "I have heard directly from farmers across the country that the previous SFI funding was not fairly distributed – with a quarter going to just 4% of farms

"Farming is the backbone of our countryside and food security and I am proud that today we are delivering on our promise to open the first window for small farms and those without an agreement."

The department reminded farmers who are ineligible for this window that they will get their chance to apply for the scheme once the second window opens in September, which will be open to all farms.

SFI26

Defra noted that the scheme is built around a standard three-year agreement and allows farmers to choose from 71 actions to fit their land and farming enterprise. 

According to the department, this year's scheme "introduces significant reforms to make funding go further", allowing the money to be spread "more fairly" across the farming sector.

Government officials listed these new reforms, including a £100,000 annual agreement cap, a single agreement per farm business, and the removal of the SFI management payment.

In addition to this, a new cap on adding land to rotational actions after year 1 has also been introduced, which "provides greater budget certainty", according to Defra.

Budget

With the first window being "demand-led", Defra estimated that it will be open to applications "for around two months", although noting that it may close sooner if the £60 million budget is fully allocated.

The government committed to providing regular updates on the allocation of the first window's budget, "giving farmers clear visibility of how quickly funding is being taken up".

Looking ahead, the department also announced that the second window of the scheme will allow farmers with soon-to-expire ELM agreements to be able to apply for land in those expiring agreements before their existing agreement expires.

The second window's new functionality will apply to the following agreements: SFI23; Countryside Stewardship Mid Tier; Legacy CS Higher Tier; and Environmental Stewardship Higher Level Stewardship.

Defra advised that "some small farms may wish to consider waiting to take advantage of this feature, given that they will only be allowed one SFI26 agreement".