SFI

I joined a Green Alliance panel on what's behind rising food prices. My two asks of government: keep SFI and put more budget into it, and move farm R&D money towards farmer-led research.

DEFRA have said they want SFI27 to reach more farms than SFI26 managed. I have run the numbers on nine ways they could do it - rate cuts, caps, haircuts, spatial targeting, scoring, auctions - and on what it would take to just find a bigger budget.

A recent article criticised Defra for not collecting the soil organic matter data it paid for through SFI. Quite a bit of that data has been added to Soil Benchmark, so our co-founder Ben Butler ran the analysis Defra is missing out on.

Defra published the Window 2 application data on Friday. Working out from it when SFI27 might open, how big it could be, and what would have to change to stop it descending into the same scramble.

Window 2 opened at 10:07 and closed at 15:54. Here are the workings behind our forecast that two thirds of farms would miss out - and what actually happened.

DEFRA's full Window 1 breakdown is out. 7,000 applications, £9,700 average agreement, and low input grassland in 74% of them. Three charts against SFI24, and what it says about Window 2 opening on the 22nd.

Some unexpected actions like pond management 🦆 and haymaking 🦗 turned up in the top 5, so I ran a quick comparison against SFI23/24.

🐄🌾 Another £50m went into SFI26 on Friday. After the summer we've had I expect it's still going to run out very quickly. A few thoughts below on why, what to think about now, and a new SFI planning tool we've built to help.

DEFRA recently published what they paid out last year to farmers across their schemes, so time for another dig into the numbers, ahead of the main SFI re-launch in September.

Tom's take on yesterday's announcement of how the new SFI26 scheme will operate

Great news that the CS Mid-Tier will be extended - but what does it mean for the future of SFI?

Tom's take on Dieter Helm's paper outlining the big forces he thinks will be driving UK farming for the next 10 years

Tom's take on George Eustice's reflections on the future of the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI). For those not following the twists and turns of farming policy as nerdily as me 😂 here’s a quick explainer:

DEFRA says ~3,000 paused SFI applications can now go ahead — but only up to £9.3k/year. New data shows SAM3 leads by value, while SAM1 covers the most land.

Insights and analysis on the SFI progress update from DEFRA for the final months of 2024 and looking forward into 2025

Tom dives into the latest stats for the Sustainable Farming Incentive

💷 Even a 40ha farm could make £2,500+ from these easy-wins. 💡 Find out the 4 free tools which make them a no-brainer.

📈 📊 SFI UPDATE: How much has been spent on SFI according to newly released DEFRA figures? ... 🤓🚨