Hill farmers face 'outsized' hit to livelihoods with delays to farming schemes
Hill farmers, who are among England’s poorest, face an “outsized” hit to livelihoods from delays to new farming schemes, a think tank has warned.
Efforts to tackle climate change, restore nature and curb flood risk in lower-lying areas are also threatened by a lack of new nature-friendly farming payments to upland areas, the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) said.
Analysis by the ECIU has shown that hill farmers are only receiving 8 per cent or £39 million of the Government’s new farming support scheme, the sustainable farming incentive (SFI), despite accounting for 15 per cent of England’s area.
And there have been repeated delays to overhauling and expanding another part of the new farming payments programme, the Countryside Stewardship “higher tier” scheme for creating woodlands and other habitat, which will be key to supporting upland farms, the ECIU said.
Neil Heseltine, an upland farmer and member of the Nature Friendly Farming Network from Malham in North Yorkshire, said hill farmers were “ready, willing and able” to do more for nature and climate change on their land, but the support has not been there for them.
He added: “I don’t begrudge our lowland peers the funding they’re getting, I just want some of it to flow up the hill to allow us to do the same.
“If it doesn’t, climate and nature will suffer.
“And as the old subsidies are phased out, I don’t know what hill farmers will do if we can’t get into these more ambitious, higher-paying, higher-tier schemes we’ve long been promised.”
Since Brexit, agricultural subsidies which mainly paid landowners for the amount of land farmed are being changed to environmental land management scheme (Elms) payments for “public goods” such as creating habitat, healthy soils and clean water.
Elms consists of three tiers – the SFI, the Countryside Stewardship higher tier scheme, and a large-scale landscape recovery scheme involving groups of landowners.
The Government has prioritised the development and delivery of the SFI, as it is most relevant to the majority of farmers, but the options landowners can implement in return for payments under the scheme are less well suited to hill farmers – who have among the lowest incomes – the think tank warned.