The Sustainable Farming Incentive

As an example, there are several actions for hedgerows. Hedgerow management (£10 per side per 100 metres) involves cutting, laying or coppicing on rotation to create a range of different heights and widths across the farm’s hedgerow network.

There is a separate action to assess the condition of hedges, which pays £3 per side per 100 metres. For establishing hedgerow trees (one per 100 metres) a payment of £10 per 100 metres is available. Undertaking all three actions on an internal hedge – where you have management control of both sides – will thus attract a payment of £36 for every 100 metres per year.

Annual payments for low input grassland mirror those in Countryside Stewardship, at £151 per ha. Within SFI, however, the actions are more flexible. For example, supplementary feeding is allowed, provided it does not cause poaching.

A full list of all the actions available and the associated payment rates is below. In addition to the actions, there is an annual management payment of £20 per ha for the first 50 ha. This effectively adds up to £1000 to all SFI agreements.

As before, SFI agreements will run for 3 years and payments are made quarterly in arrears. This gives greater flexibility for tenant farmers to enter the scheme, as they do not need landlord consent, provided they can reasonably expect to have management control of the land for the 3-year term.

When the scheme re-opens, there will be a “controlled rollout”, which means not everyone will be able to apply at once.

Applications will be made online and the RPA expect to make agreement offers within a few weeks of application, considerably quicker than any other schemes.

In theory, land can be entered into SFI, even if it is already in other schemes. However, you cannot be paid twice for doing the same thing. Many Countryside Stewardship options overlap to some degree with SFI actions, which effectively means that land often cannot be in both schemes. Similarly, hedges already in the CS option BE3 cannot be entered into SFI.

SFI 2022 has now been closed to new applications. Actions to improve soil health and undertake moorland assessments were available as part of SFI in 2022. The moorland assessment actions and payments will be unchanged for 2023, but this is not the case for soil health.

In SFI 2022, drawing up a soil management plan and carrying out a programme of soil testing paid £28 per ha on improved grassland or £22 per ha on arable land. In 2023, the payment will only be £5.80 per ha (plus £95 per agreement).

With the additional £20 per ha management payment, that means the 2023 payment may be slightly more or slightly less than in 2022. However, for areas in excess of 50 ha, total payments will almost certainly be less than before.

DEFRA has stated that SFI 2022 agreements will all be transitioned to a 2023 agreement. The process for doing this is not yet clear, but DEFRA has said that “you won’t be at any disadvantage because you entered the earlier version of the scheme and we will make the transition as seamless as possible for you.”

Agreement holders need to make sure they undertake all the actions they signed up to, to ensure they receive the payments from their current agreement.