The latest Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) window closed in less than six hours, whatever happened to the idea of listening to farmers?
The pressing need to tackle food security and the climate emergency are apparent and it is farmers who hold the key to ensuring that Britain makes progress on both these all important issues. So the idea of the latest Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) window closing in less than six hours is absurd.
The new SFI pays farmers in England for “public goods” such as insecticide-free farming, wildflower strips and managing ponds and hedgerows.
The second window, for all farms, opened on Tuesday, but was closed in less than six hours as the £233m fund had been fully allocated.
This would be forgivable if the likes of the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) not repeatedly warned the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) that there was a lack of a sufficient budget. It strikes as administrative incompetence at best and negligence at worst.
The mishandling of the latest window of SFI will now leave the agricultural sector with haves and have nots.
It isn’t the first time that the Labour government has left farmers in the lurch with its mishandling of sustainability initiatives. In 2025, Defra abruptly closed the SFI to new applicants, saying it had allocated its £1bn budget for the year.
The latest misstep will only heighten uncertainty as there is no commitment from the Government for SFI27. Given that many farmers are facing growing financial pressures, turning support for them into a game of who can press a button the quickest is callous. This episode is a reminder of why the Government has a long way to go when it comes to resetting its relationship with farmers. Labour cannot afford any further mistakes with trust in the party at an all time low in rural areas of the country. Farmers facing unprecedented environmental challenges deserve much better from policymakers.