Farmers in England are expressing anxiety over their inability to continue restoring natural habitats and reducing their carbon footprint following the freezing of government funding for these initiatives. The environmental Secretary, Steve Reed, recently announced that the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI), a scheme that compensates farmers for dedicating space on their land to nature and conservation, will be temporarily halted and reviewed before the spending review in June. This review encompasses the scheme’s scope and budget.

Under this scheme, which seeks to pay farmers for their environmental stewardship rather than just their farming activities and land ownership, 70% of England’s land, which is under farm management, would need to accommodate nature conservation efforts. Such efforts include the planting of trees and hedges, creation of ponds, and preservation of wildflower strips.

Farmers, including Amelia Greenaway and Anthony Curwen, who are currently involved with the SFI, express concerns over the funding freeze. Greenaway, who farms native cattle and pigs on the National Trust’s Killerton Estate in Devon, had been planning to use SFI funds to create a self-sustaining circular system on her farm. The funding delay jeopardizes these plans, forcing her to reconsider sustainable practices due to lack of resources.

Curwen, the country estate manager of Quex Park in Kent, echoes these sentiments, emphasizing the importance of such funding in promoting sustainable farming practices. He is particularly dishearted by the potential means testing of the scheme, which he believes could push larger farms towards intensifying food production at the expense of nature conservation.

Both farmers stress the necessity of government support for sustainable farming, warning that the lack of such support could reverse the progress made in biodiversity recovery and climate change mitigation. Without the SFI, they fear that many farmers will be discouraged from adopting environmentally friendly practices and that nature conservation efforts will suffer.

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/apr/05/farmers-in-england-fear-for-nature-after-sustainable-farming-funding-frozen