EFRA Chair comments on Defra’s halting of new applications to SFI

“The sudden announcement yesterday that the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) would cease to take new applications to the scheme, with immediate effect and with no prior warning having been given, is another very regrettable decision by Defra. The abrupt halting of new applications to SFI will leave many farmers with no prospect of support to replace direct payments.

“Farmers are already under immense pressure from a perfect storm of adverse conditions. For many farmers, this latest move by the Government will only add to the uncertainty and insecurity of their livelihoods and threaten their financial viability. 

“At a time when the Government has deeply fractured its relationship with farmers, this decision on SFI only compounds the impression that the Government either does not have a grasp of the realities that farmers face or is sanguine with the possibility of farms up and down the country going out of business, their land being sold off to other entities and British farmland being lost to farming altogether.”

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Image: House of Commons/Roger Harris