Jonathan Marsden and Claire Robinson - How to get ready for SFI 2023

The Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) pays farmers for actions that support food production, farm productivity and resilience, whilst protecting and enhancing the environment.

In 2023, the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) will be bigger and more flexible with 23 pick and mix actions for farmers to choose from, including on soil health, moorland, hedgerows, integrated pest management, farmland wildlife, buffer strips, and low input grassland.

For episode 12 of the Defra Farming Podcast, we brought together Claire Robinson, Senior Countryside Adviser at the National Farmers Union, and Defra Sustainable Farming Incentive lead Jonathan Marsden to talk about what farmers can do to get ready to apply for SFI in 2023.

If you are a farmer or land manager and you'd like to apply for SFI this year, please fill out this online form.

Find out more about how to get ready for SFI.

Transcript

00:00
Jonathan Marsden, Head of Sustainable Farming Incentive, Defra
Hello and welcome to the Defra Farming Podcast. My name is Jonathan Marsden and I work in Defra with my colleagues developing the new environmental land management schemes. As part of that team, my focus is SFI, that's the Sustainable Farming Incentive, and I lead on the content of the scheme, so the actions that we're asking you to do as farmers to help deliver great food for the country and also enhance the environment.

I'm delighted today to be joined by Claire Robinson, who is the Senior Countryside Adviser for the NFU, and we're going to talk about everything you need to know as a farmer to get ready for SFI this year. So Claire, do you just want to say a few words about yourself to our listeners?

Claire Robinson, Senior Countryside Adviser, National Farmers Union
Hi, I'm Claire Robinson. I'm Senior Countryside Adviser at the National Farmers Union. It's quite a broad job title. I've been working on the development of ELMs (environmental land management schemes), getting views from farmers and talking to Defra and trying to shape the scheme. I do have a farming background myself, so my family's mixed farming, so we've got dairy, beef, arable, it’s probably now classed as regenerative farming rather than mixed farming these days, but it does keep my feet on the ground.

01:14
Jonathan Marsden
Thank you, Claire. We're a farming family as well, we milk cows in the Peak District.

Claire Robinson
It's great to have the opportunity to put some questions directly to Defra about how the scheme is shaping up. What I'd like to hear is what do Defra believe farmers can get out of this new scheme?

Jonathan Marsden
I think that's a really, really good question, Claire, and I think it's important to set all this, what we're doing now, in the right context. If we look back over the last 100 years or so, we've seen massive improvements in farm productivity. Average yields of wheat, growth rates of lamb, milk yields from dairy cows have increased significantly. And in that same time the number of people employed in agriculture as a proportion of the workforce has dropped from 30% down to a couple of per cent.

02:01
So we've seen this massive increase in farm productivity and mechanisation, and the industry can be proud of what it's done to produce good quality food to help feed the nation. But there is a ‘but’ and that's come at a cost, in some cases to the natural environment, in terms of water quality, loss of biodiversity, impacts on soil health in some cases. And as an industry, we're quite carbon hungry.

Now the job of SFI in particular, but ELM as a whole is, we need to try and square that circle. We want to maintain levels of food production but help address some of those environmental concerns.

We want farmers not only to be producing great quality food to feed the nation, but we want good quality water, we want a rich and diverse biodiversity in the countryside, we want great soil health, which is a massively important strategic reserve for the nation, and we need to move towards net zero for the industry and for wider society, and SFI in particular is giving the industry tools to help meet those twin challenges of the environment and food production.

03:08
Claire Robinson
So from the farmer's perspective, you're providing some opportunities to deliver for the environment whilst producing for food. Can you give us some examples of what types of actions farmers could be rewarded for and isn't about taking land out of production?

Jonathan Marsden
Yeah. One of the group of actions that we're launching this year, introducing into the scheme, is integrated pest management. We know we need to protect our crops and to a lesser extent our grasslands. So we're giving the industry tools that help us move away from what can be a reliance on plant protection products. So we start with integrated pest management planning, looking at, across the rotation, across the farm business, putting in place the right crops in the right places, looking at how we integrate a range of different techniques into reducing the need for plant protection products.

04:02
We've done some great work with the NFU in our tests and trials, developing an integrated pest management planning tool that will be available to your members to help you in that process. But we're also giving some extra tools in the kitbag. We know that where we've got an insect-rich habitat in close proximity to growing crops, that can help reduce the need for the use of insecticides.

So we've put in a tool in the kitbag in terms of pollen and nectar mixes and strips, and in-field strips, to give you the flexibility as a farmer to position those around the farm, and there's a payment for growing those areas, to help ensure that we've got an insect-rich habitat within proximity to the growing crop. We're also giving a tool in terms of companion cropping, where there's a payment for growing 2 crops together and we're being quite open about how this can work.

04:57
You don't need to take both crops through to harvest, a nurse crop and a main crop, because there's good evidence that where we grow 2 crops together, we can reduce the need for herbicides, and to an extent insecticides, and particularly if that companion crop is a legume, that can obviously help feed the cereal crop, for example, or the oilseed rape.

And then finally in integrated pest management, we've got a payment for no insecticides use. So if you’re using all those actions strategically around the farm in the right way with the help of a basis adviser to help you pull the plan together, then in many cases you can remove the need for an insecticide altogether. And a lot of the actions, to return to your question about taking land out of production, a lot of the actions now in SFI aren't about taking land out of production. They're about that land that is in production, managing it in a slightly different way, in a more sustainable way.

Claire Robinson
Thank you, Jonathan. I know there’s other actions in there, could you just give an outline of the groups of other activities farmers could undertake?

06:01
Jonathan Marsden
Yeah, we spoke in a bit of detail there about integrated pest management, but we've also got 3 actions relating to hedgerow management. We've got 3 actions relating to crop nutrient management across the farm. We've got actions that will help farmland biodiversity on grassland, and arable and horticultural land. We've got actions regarding buffer strips and we've got low/no-input grassland.

Claire Robinson
There are some really good actions in there. When I've been talking to farmers, I know that we've got the legumes in grassland, which opens up the ability for a lot more farmers to get engaged in this, compared to the old Countryside Stewardship, and the hedgerow actions as well. They're quite broad, they’re quite engaging, and it's the first time I've seen trees in hedgerows being recognised.

And again, there is something there that a lot of farmers can have a look at and actually go, okay, I've never got into a scheme before, I can do this. Is that your feeling from the meetings with farmers you've been involved in?

07:00
Jonathan Marsden
Absolutely, and we've had a huge amount of positive feedback. We know that the SFI 22 offer regarding soils was quite limited and we've expanded the range of stuff that's available to people. There's something in here for every type of farmer.

Claire Robinson
It’s positive that we've also got actions in there around soils that you've just mentioned, that’s there to help you understand your soils, which I know a lot of farmers will tell me, I already understand my soils, Claire! But there's support there as well to do the soil testing to get the organic matter information across your farm, and that's something that has come over from SFI 22, isn't it?

Jonathan Marsden
Absolutely.

Claire Robinson
...and it’s really helpful. What I’ve found interesting is there’s new actions in here that grassland farmers can do that goes beyond, I'm going to say low-input grassland because we have got low-input grassland in SFI, but there are other actions in here that we haven't seen in the old agri-environment schemes. Are you able to tell us a bit more about those, Jonathan?

07:57
Jonathan Marsden
Absolutely. We've already talked a little bit about legume-rich grassland and the contribution all those legumes can make towards reducing fertiliser bills. That action sits in a group that we're calling nutrient management. There's 3 actions in the nutrient management. We start with nutrient management planning. There's a payment there to get a qualified adviser onto the farm to advise you on how to optimise use of crop nutrients, and particularly how we can maximise the use of natural sources of nitrogen.

Manures and improving the soil can all contribute towards reducing the need for ammonium nitrate in urea, but there are other options as well available to farmers. We want that professional advice on the farm to really look at how can we reduce our reliance on ammonium nitrate and urea.

There's also, in the arable situation, legume-rich fallows. Having a fallow in place for 2 to 3 years of a legume-rich sward that can really work wonders for soil structure and also build up those soil reserves of crop nutrients. And if managed correctly, they're also a good way of controlling black grass.

09:06
Just turning back to the grassland situation, we've got buffer strips next to hedgerows and watercourses. Under the hedgerow management, no requirement for a buffer strip other than what you're obliged to do through cross-compliance. If you want to put a buffer next to hedgerows or watercourses in a grassland situation or an arable, there's a payment for grass buffers next to environmental features.

Again, for grassland, we've got taking small areas out of grazing, out of mowing, awkward steep banks or field corners, not mowing those, not cutting those, and essentially just allowing them to develop. We don't want those to be grazed. So you can apply for a capital grant through the Stewardship scheme to fence those areas off to keep livestock excluded from them.

09:50
Claire Robinson
You've just mentioned grazing. Fencing out areas can be quite challenging in a livestock system where you’ve got a lot of grazing. Am I right that the buffer strips can be grazed?

Jonathan Marsden
Yes.

Claire Robinson
It makes it easier to manage and put into your grassland system than perhaps some of the other options?

Jonathan Marsden
Absolutely. Those grassland buffers in a grassland situation, they can be grazed, we're just asking for them not to receive any inputs from fertiliser or plant protection products, unless you need to spot-spray docks and thistles. If they're in mowing fields, don't mow them, just leave the margin unmown. But it's perfectly acceptable to graze those because we know excluding livestock is challenging at the best of times.

Claire Robinson
Yes, very challenging at times. Thank you. Just looking across at the differences in the schemes, how would you describe what a farmer needs to do? Because there's a lot of activity you can do. There are 23 new actions you can do under these broad banners. Can you just give a bit more description of how I would approach it as a farmer.

10:52
Jonathan Marsden
Yeah, and it's an area where we've made quite a big change from what was available last year in SFI 22. We've moved away from the rigid structure of standards where if you came into a level of ambition you were obliged to do a certain action on a certain proportion of your farm, that’s gone. We've listened to the feedback from farmers and growers, and we've moved now to what we're calling a ‘pick and mix’ approach.

As you say, Claire, we have 23 actions available for farmers to do in SFI 23, and you can choose as a farmer to do which ones you want to do and how much of them you want to do within that theme, nutrient management or IPM or hedgerows. And you can choose which themes to take part in and importantly, you can choose how much you want to do with each action.

So there's no rigid percentage anymore, it's entirely up to the farmer to make that work for you and your farm. Every situation is different and we want to give people that flexibility to make it work best for them.

Claire Robinson
And just picking up on the how much, are there any size restrictions in terms of how much of an action you do in a field. In Countryside Stewardship you used to have some restrictions that said you must do 0.25 of a hectare of an action.

12:04
Jonathan Marsden
No, in SFI all those area constraints have gone. So we've got actions regarding field corner management. We're not saying how big the field corner management can be because we know every situation is different. Things like winter bird food, there's no minimum or maximum plot sizes. Obviously it's best for the environment if these things are spread around the farm, but we're leaving that entirely up to you as a farmer to decide where and how much of these you want to deploy.

Claire Robinson
That sounds really good because actually it gives me the flexibility to make a field corner work with the size of my machinery as I’m going round the field, gives me a bit more scope to make it practical to deliver as well.

Jonathan Marsden
That's an important feature of the scheme. We've got grass margins, which is the only one where there is a restriction, thinking about it, in that we go between 4 and 12 metres. In Stewardship at the moment, Countryside Stewardship, it’s 4 to 6 metres, and we've given that flexibility on the width because if you use either the grass margins or the pollen or nectar mixers or the winter bird food mixes, use those to square up awkward shaped fields to make them fit your machinery widths, that can really help productivity and can help balance off the impact of taking some of these less productive areas out of cropping.

13:18
Claire Robinson
One of the questions is land tenure, because I spoke to a lot of farmers in the spring. Who's eligible? And can I get in if I'm a tenant? And those landlord-tenant relationships. How does SFI deal with that?

Jonathan Marsden
So we've done a lot of work to make SFI as  accessible to as many farmers as possible, particularly tenants. And in the vast majority of cases, there's no need for any landlord’s consent. RPA aren't going to ask you if you've got landlord’s consent, but what a tenant will need to do is check that there's no conditions in their tenancy agreement that stops them doing anything they're applying for or wanting to apply for an SFI. So we're offering a lot more flexibility around that than what we've had in past schemes. You need to have control of the land for the 3 years of an SFI agreement. We're offering some flexibility around that.

14:10
A lot of people are on short term tenancies. If it's been in an FBT (Farm Business Tenancy), where it's just extended on an annual rolling basis, we want that type of arrangement to be eligible to come into the scheme. If, as a tenant, you've got a reasonable expectation that you're going to have control of the land for 3 years, then bring that land in.

If, after that, the landlord contacts you to say, actually there's some land they need to take back for whatever reason, and you didn't know about that beforehand, just contact the RPA and they'll remove those fields from the agreement. If you've completed all the actions that you should have done on that land and you're at the end of an agreement year, then there will be no penalty and there will be no need to reclaim what we've paid in the past on that land, we'll just carry on with what's left in the agreement.

Claire Robinson
That sounds really flexible and we look forward to seeing more of that approach in the rest of the scheme.

14:59
How does the application process work? What type of payments are farmers going to be able to get through the scheme? When are they going to get paid?

Jonathan Marsden
Okay, I'll just pull out a few payment rates that might be of interest to people. So we've mentioned pollen and nectar mix. That pays £614 a hectare. We've got actions in here for grassland. On improved grassland, if you've got legumes within the sward, either trefoils or clovers, then there's a payments of £102 a hectare for legume-rich grassland and you can still put a little bit of fertiliser on that, you can still spray that legume-rich sward, obviously carefully, otherwise you'll take the clover out.

If you're in a low/no-input grassland situation where you don't want to put any inputs onto that, just a light dressing of farmyard manure, then the payment for that type of grassland is £151 a hectare, and it's the same payment rate in the uplands and the lowlands now.

Claire Robinson
That's positive to hear.

15:55
Jonathan Marsden
In terms of frequency of payments, in SFI, once you've got your live agreement, you
will be paid every 3 months, so every quarter following the start of your agreement.
There's no need to submit a claim every quarter. That payment will just come
through automatically. At the end of each year you will submit a declaration that just says you’ve done everything that you were obliged to do as part of your agreement. But that's quite a straightforward process, there's no big, complicated claim forms like we've had in the past.

Claire Robinson
You've just mentioned the annual declaration. I understand that you can add in new activity at the end of the year as well. So again, that's a new element of flexibility that we've not seen with previous schemes.

Jonathan Marsden
Absolutely. And we know lots of farmers might want to dip their toe in the water, start small. We've now got the flexibility to do amendments as  people’s ambitions grow. You may want to do more of some of the actions. We're rolling out SFI incrementally. So last year we started with the soil standards. This year we've added nutrient management, IPM, grasslands and hedgerows.

Next year we'll be adding more into the scheme. We want people to take up those new actions as they become available.

17:03
Claire Robinson
Do we have any indication of what the offer is for next year? People might just hold off applying.

Jonathan Marsden
There's no need to wait because you'll be able to add it into your agreement. We did publish, back in January this year, details of what we're intending to launch in 2024. But to give a summary of that, we're looking at precision farming.

Claire Robinson
So in the SFI 22, you were paying farmers to add organic matter to soil, in that ambition to increase carbon and improve soil conditions as well. Can you just explain why we haven't got that in the offer that's being rolled out?

Jonathan Marsden
Yeah. So we had 3 actions that were in SFI 22 that don't feature in the revised offer going forward. You've mentioned the ‘add organic matter to arable land’, there were also 2 actions in an arable situation, 70% of the arable land to have green cover on it over winter, and then in a grassland situation that percentage went up to 95. Those aren't being taken forward and that's because they don't really fit with the new pick and mix approach. As standalone actions they were difficult.

18:07
On the organic matter, we know there's an awful lot of arable soils that are getting very low in their status regarding organic matter, and we're very keen that we do something about that. That's partly why we've introduced cover crops, that's partly why we've introduced legume-rich fallows as part of nutrient management.

And what we're also working on, that we're hoping to roll out as part of next year, is a summer cover crop action, what a lot of farmers will traditionally call a catch crop between harvesting one crop and planting the next. That's something in development at the moment and that's to try and help improve the organic matter status of our arable soils.

Claire Robinson
It does feel like it's quite a complicated landscape. Are there any plans to simplify the application process for all these different schemes we've got running?

18:53
Jonathan Marsden
That is something that we're looking at. It's been important that we get the actions out there. We wanted to broaden the appeal over the current base of Countryside Stewardship, which is why we were very keen to get SFI out and rolling because we want that to be accessible to as many people as possible. As we go through this transition period where BPS is slowly phasing out and SFI is slowly growing, and we're looking to improve Countryside Stewardship and make that better, we go through this sticky bit, which we're in at the moment, where we've got lots of different offers available.

And part of the plan is to look at how we can simplify the offer, how we can make this more easy for farmers to navigate. It doesn’t make sense to have similar actions with the same payment rates in 2 different schemes. We're in that space at the moment,  that's an area that we're looking to see how can we simplify this and just make this a far more straightforward process for people to engage with.

19:51
Claire Robinson
And that will be interesting to follow through, because a lot of questions I'm getting at the moment relate to, should I apply for Countryside Stewardship? Should I apply for SFI? How can I make the 2 work together? So getting a simpler application system where those issues are designed out upfront would be really beneficial.

One of the things we haven't mentioned is capital items. As I understand it, they're still available, but they're not labeled as SFI capital items, they’re Countryside Stewardship. Can I just apply for capital items through CS on the same land as I've got an SFI agreement?

Jonathan Marsden
Yeah, absolutely, and that's how we've designed the scheme to work. And there's 2 ways of accessing capital grants through Stewardship. You can go through the mid-tier/higher-tier route, or there's a standalone offer through Countryside Stewardship. What's available through that has grown quite considerably in recent years.

For example, if you're applying for hedgerows under SFI and you want to do some gapping-up or plant some new hedgerows, you can apply for a Countryside Stewardship capital grant to plant those new hedgerows, etc., do the gapping-up, and as soon as those hedgerows are in the ground, then you can get the SFI payments for hedgerow management on them.

21:04
Claire Robinson
So really, we shouldn't differentiate them as 2 schemes. We should be looking at them coming together and complementing each other, and not looking at the names as such.

Jonathan Marsden
That's absolutely the right way to think about it.

Claire Robinson
I know we've got a new approach to monitoring and the enforcement regime, and as yet, we've not really seen it play out. So it would be useful to run through, how is the monitoring different, and how does the penalty regime work? If I get something wrong, if I've got my area wrong to what I've declared, what's going to happen?

Jonathan Marsden
So one of the really big changes is we've got more flexibility now. What we can now do, that we couldn't do in the past, is give people the opportunity to put it right.

We want these agreements to deliver both for the farmer and for the environment. And the best way to do that is to give people the opportunity to make amends, put stuff right. That's at the heart of this. That's not to say there isn’t going to be sanction if somebody has taken major liberties, because we've got to protect public money. And actually it's only fair on all the other farmers that are abiding by the rules.

22:08
Claire Robinson
That sounds very fair and proportionate, and in my case, hopefully I'll get less casework coming in my direction as a consequence of that.

One of the questions I do keep getting, the no insecticide action, you sign up at the front for 3 years to say on an area of ground, I'm not going to use insecticides, farmers need to respond to their market, they need to respond to what's happening in the field, that's good IPM practice, so if they do find they've got an infestation and they do need to apply an insecticide, and say it’s in year 2 of the agreement, how would that be handled? Because this is about the risk, and farmers need to know what the risk is of going into these agreements.

Jonathan Marsden
This is what we call a change of circumstances. It's just a question of contacting the RPA as soon as you're going to need to use the insecticide on that area, notifying them of the area of concern, and they'll take that affected area out of the agreement for that year and you won't be paid on that area.

23:03
Claire Robinson
And that relates just to that payment for that year. It doesn't get multiplied back to the start of the agreement.

Jonathan Marsden
No, just that year.

Claire Robinson
That's a really helpful answer. I know farmers in the arable sector who are interested in this option. They're looking to give it a go. They just need that level of flexibility, that it sounds like you're going to give us, getting the confidence with that option.

Jonathan Marsden
This is a big part of why we've introduced the payment for the IPM plan and getting a basis adviser involved, because we know there are risks associated with particularly that no insecticide, and getting that professional input, at the planning stage, can help minimise those risks. Thinking about where you've got those insect-rich habitats, and they don’t necessarily need to be a pollen and nectar mix, it could just be a hedgerow or a grass margin, trying to minimise those risks, but they don't completely go away, which is why this change of circumstance is important, for exactly the situation that you've set out, Claire.

24:00
Claire Robinson
That is really helpful. I will just pick up on another arable question, which is to do with rotations. Quite a few of these options are rotational. The question I've had is, field sizes change year by year, how do I plan that rotation in? Is there any flexibility or do I have to go for the minimum field size across the 3 years for that option?

Jonathan Marsden
There's a section in the handbook that covers rotational options. You apply for the area that sits best with your crop rotation, particularly the area that these rotational actions are going to be in the first year of your agreement. But we absolutely recognise that situations change and, as you say, field sizes.

So for those rotational options, each year there'll be a little process where you notify the RPA of where those actions are taking place that year and the areas involved. There's some flexibility. Those areas can flex as the rotation moves round the farm. The only real requirement is, each year of your agreement, the minimum area of the rotational option we're expecting to see is 50%.

So if you apply for 10 hectares of a rotational option in year 1, you will then be obliged to do at least 5 hectares or half of your first year amount, each year of your agreement. If you want to increase the area of rotational option, there's no upper limit, but there is just that lower limit of doing at least 50% of your first year area of your rotational options.

25:28
Claire Robinson
That's actually quite flexible, isn't it? And it does allow you to plan in a good rotation across your 3 years and help it fit with the rest of your rotation.

Jonathan Marsden
We need to ensure some sort of minimum amount of delivery. We're looking for a change to benefit the environment, so we need to put some minimum in there to ensure that we're getting what we expect out of these agreements.

Claire Robinson
That's understood, thank you. What would you advise farmers to do if they're interested in applying? What's your next steps?

25:57
Jonathan Marsden
In terms of getting ready to apply for SFI, I think there are 2 main things that you need to start doing. First of all, make sure all your land details are up to date on Rural Payments. If you've acquired any new land, are those land parcels linked to your SBI number? Are the digital maps correct? All the land needs to be right to start with.

The next thing I would say is have a read of the handbook, look at the actions that we've published, look at the payment rates, what's achievable on your farm. If you've got an agronomist or an adviser, engage them in that discussion and look at how you can make changes to your farm and get payments for doing that through SFI, and also bring into that conversation Countryside Stewardship.

Claire Robinson
Yeah, and what I've picked up, when I've been talking to farmers, is getting prepared takes longer than applying.

Jonathan Marsden
Absolutely.

Claire Robinson
The getting prepared is, make sure your maps are up to date with the RPA and get those RLE1 [forms] in and processed because that underpins the application online and taking a bit of time to look at the handbook, even I've looked at the handbook and I see something different when I look at it again.

So those conversations, talking to people, comparing notes, are actually important to making sure you can make this work on your farm as part of your whole business. Those are my 2 takeaways.

27:24
Jonathan Marsden
I’d absolutely agree. That planning how you want to make SFI and Stewardship work on your farm, that is central to this, a very clear idea of what it is you want to do, where you want to do it, before you start the application process.

Claire Robinson
And I think that will stand everybody in good stead.

Jonathan Marsden
Well, thank you very much, Claire. That has been a really interesting conversation and I'd like to personally thank you for taking time out of your exceptionally busy schedule. It's been really great to talk and explain what it is we're trying to achieve, and I hope that's been useful to you, our farming listeners, and forms part of your first step towards applying for SFI when it becomes available.

28:02
Claire Robinson
Yeah, thank you for the opportunity, and the openness and the way you've answered the questions. It’s a really good way of getting a good overview of what the scheme is and I know we’ll all continue to grow our knowledge of how this scheme could work in a practical sense on farm.

Jonathan Marsden
Thank you, Claire. If you'd like to subscribe to our podcast, you can get it from wherever you normally get your podcasts. You can follow the Defra Farming and Countryside programme in more detail on our blog defrafarming.blog.gov.uk. Thank you very much for listening and thank you again to Claire for coming along today.

Claire Robinson
Thank you.