East Anglia's farmers will learn today how their subsidies will be phased out from next year, as ministers announce long-awaited details on the transition to a new post-Brexit environmental payments scheme.
The changes to agricultural policy after Brexit, which will be brought in over seven years up to 2028, are being seen as the most significant change to farming and land management for England in more than 50 years.
The government has committed to phasing out the EU's system of "direct payment" subsidies based on the amount of land farmed, and replacing it with a new Environmental Land Management Scheme (ELMS) which will instead reward farmers for work to improve landscapes and ecosystems.
Farmers across East Anglia have been urgently calling for more detail on exactly how the transition will work, with direct payments being phased out from 2021, but ELMS not due to be rolled out in full until 2024.
Today, the government will publish its "roadmap" on how the existing payments will be reduced, and how the replacement ELMS will be formed of three tiered "components":
- Sustainable farming incentive: Accessible to all farms to support measures such as improving soil health and hedgerows and reducing pesticides.
- Local nature recovery: Paying for actions such as creating, managing or restoring habitats, managing floods through natural features and boosting wild species.
- Landscape recovery: Funding large-scale woodland creation, peatland restoration, or creation or restoration of coastal habitats such as wetlands and salt marsh.
A national pilot for the new scheme is set to be launched in late 2021, with core elements of the sustainable farming incentive to be introduced from 2022 ahead of the full roll-out of the overall programme in late 2024.
But farming leaders said the transition was fraught with risk as "lifeline" subsidy payments were being removed before the new system is implemented.
Gary Ford, East Anglia regional director for the National Farmers' Union (NFU), said: "We’ve consistently stressed that sustainable farming and food production must be at the heart of England’s new agricultural policy. It’s good to see many of our ideas being recognised in this agricultural transition roadmap.
“But this announcement still leaves some vital questions unanswered, especially around the timeline of the phasing out of farm support payments and the overall economic impact these changes will have.
“Given that the largest reductions in support will affect larger farms, there is a concern that this will have a disproportionate impact on businesses in our region.
“As our president Minette Batters has said, expecting farmers to operate profitable businesses that produce food and increase their environmental delivery, while phasing out existing support and without a complete replacement scheme for almost three years, is high risk and a very big ask.”
Mark Bridgeman, president of the Country Land and Business Association, added: "Many farmers will find it hard to see past the drastic cuts to the basic payment scheme, that begin next year. The average family farm will see cuts of over 50pc before the new schemes are fully available in 2024.
"The government has announced the sustainable farming incentive to help bridge the gap, but with only a month to go before the transition phase begins, we have no details whatsoever about how this will work on the ground and the level of investment it will provide."
The government has committed to maintaining its £2.4bn annual farming budget during this parliament, but plans to halve the £1.8bn paid in direct payments by 2024, with the biggest reductions in the highest payment bands.
It is also expected to launch a farming investment fund, which will offer grants for equipment and technology such as robots and new infrastructure such as water storage on farms, and which will open from next year.
In a speech to farmers and environmental groups on Monday, environment secretary George Eustice will say: "We want farmers to access public money to help their businesses become more productive and sustainable, whilst taking steps to improve the environment and animal welfare, and deliver climate change outcomes on the land they manage.
"Rather than the prescriptive, top-down rules of the EU era, we want to support the choices that farmers and land managers take.
"If we work together to get this right, then a decade from now the rest of the world will want to follow our lead."
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