Confor welcomes the first phase of the pilot of the Sustainable Farming Incentive. Confor has worked tirelessly to ensure that woodland is included in the new Environmental Land Management Scheme. We are delighted with the outcome that on-farm woodland will form one of the “standards” for participation in this first component pilot.
Details of the new scheme have been published today and expressions of interest for the pilot will open from Monday 15 March.
The Sustainable Farming Incentive is the first of three schemes to be piloted and co-designed under the Environmental Land Management Scheme. Further information on the other two schemes, Local Nature Recovery and Landscape Recovery, will be shared later this year.
The three schemes will reward land managers for producing public goods like biodiversity, cleaner water, cleaner air, improving soil, and carbon reduction on their land. They will help land managers play a crucial role in the national effort to tackle climate change by reducing carbon emissions.
The Sustainable Farming Incentive will support approaches to farming that deliver for the environment, such as actions to improve soil health, on farm woodland, hedgerows and integrated pest management.
The pilot will build on the great success of the ongoing programme of tests and trials, which already involve over 3000 farmers and other land managers. Tests and trials focus on trying out individual parts of the future scheme, like land management plans or different payment methods – whereas the pilot will test a working version of the scheme from start to finish.
Successful candidates will then be invited to complete their application and, if eligible, they will enter into a pilot agreement starting from October 2021. This initial stage will be open to several hundred farmers, reflecting England’s distribution of farm types and locations.
Pilot participants will be asked to take part in a range of co-design activities, providing rapid feedback on their experience of all aspects of the process - from pre-application to implementing their agreements. This will ensure the scheme is fully workable and user-friendly once fully rolled out from 2024.
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Posted On: 11/03/2021