Defra Secretary of State Emma Reynolds also confirmed new opening windows to the SFI grant scheme and a sector plan for horticulture at today’s Oxford Farming Conference
A food and farming partnership board, a new £30mn collaboration fund and a simplified Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) are among the announcements made by Defra’s secretary of state Emma Reynolds at today’s Oxford Farming Conference.
In her keynote speech given today (8 January), Reynolds announced she will chair a new food and farming partnership board, with farming minister Angela Eagle as deputy chair.
The board will also include representatives from farming, retail, food processing and finance, she confirmed, as part of a new commitment to work “in partnership with, rather than impose on” the farming community.
She also announced a raft of new ‘sector plans’, with horticulture set to be the first plan to be developed and published.
A new £30mn ’Farmer Collaboration’ fund, spread over three years, will be open to farmers working collaboratively on best practice across the country, which Reynolds said had come partly off the back of Baroness Minette Batters’s recent independent review into farm profitability.
”Across the country, farmers are already coming together – sharing that best practice, managing rivers that cross boundaries, and accessing private investment that would otherwise be out of reach,” she said.
”We want to support these existing networks and help get new ones off the ground.”
Pressed by chair and Farmers Weekly editor Andrew Meredith on what projects will be eligible, Reynolds said: “I can’t give further detail today, but we will set out further detail.
”This is a new fund and one I was very keen to set up,” she said.
Asked by FPJ in the follow-up press conference, Reynolds confirmed that this new fund is not designed to replace the UK Fruit & Veg Aid Scheme, which closed in December and included the funding scheme for Producer Organisations.
She also told FPJ there is not likely to be a replacement fund specifically for horticulture businesses, and instead pointed to the upcoming sector plan for horticulture, and the planning reform changes, as steps would help fresh produce businesses invest in infrastructure.
In a range of changes made to the SFI scheme, Reynolds announced that two windows for funding applications will open this year, with small farms (under 50ha) and those without existing grants able to apply in June, and a main window opening in September for remaining applicants.
She said the scheme will be simpler and more focused, with fewer actions and less complexity. “You’ll still have plenty of choice, but it must work alongside food production, not replace it. So we will limit the amount of land that can go into schemes,” she said.
No detail over whether organic farms will be eligible for SFI was provided, an omission which has reportedly been delaying farmer decisions to convert to organic.
A quarter of the SFI funding currently goes to just four per cent of farms, according to Reynolds, who said her team is considering ways of addressing this concentration, such as an agreement value cap. She confirmed that the aim is to double the amount of farms protecting wildlife.
Regarding the shock closure of the scheme last summer, she said that: “I recognise that mistakes have been made in the past. I am determined to provide you with stability.
“I will set clear budgets for each window and publish window details in advance. There will be no more sudden unexpected closures. We will give you regular updates when a window is close to becoming fully subscribed.”
With the pre-Christmas concession on raising the Inheritance Tax (IHT) boundary to £2.5m, Reynolds said the government had listened to farmer concerns.
“Governments should listen, and in this instance we have listened. We have significantly increased the threshold,” she said, as delegates ironically struggled to listen over the blaring of protesting farmer tractor horns outside the conference.
In response to Meredith asking if farmers outside were wasting their time, Reynolds said: “From our point of view, that’s it [for changes to IHT]. With the greatest respect to those outside, it’s the people inside this room who have engaged with us quietly but respectfully who have had the most influence on this process.”
