Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs published some interesting stats on SFI26 Window 1 takeup when they announced it's closing this weekend (https://t.ly/7xUXe)
Some unexpected actions like pond management 🦆 and haymaking 🦗 turned up in the top 5, so I ran a quick comparison against SFI23/24.
Before I get into that, here are the headlines:
🔚 Window 1 (farms sub-50ha) closed on 28th Aug
📊 About 6,500 applications, averaging just under £10k/year
📅 Window 2 expected to open 22nd Sept
💷 £230m in Window 2; £100k cap; closes when budget spent
Back to the analysis 🤓:
1st chart below compares Window 1's 5 top actions against the 20 most-used SFI23/24 actions. NB 6 of the old top 20 have been scrapped.
3 of Window 1's most popular actions (CLIG3 Low Input Grassland, CSAM3 Herbal Leys & CHRW2 Manage Hedgerows) were the 3 most popular surviving actions from SFI23/24 - no suprises there.
But out of nowhere the other two most popular actions in Window 1 were WBD1 Manage Ponds (previously 19th most popular) and GRH7 Haymaking Supplement (previously 23rd).
Perhaps one explanation is that Window 1 was aimed at sub-50ha farms - presumably mostly small grassland farms - for whom many of the other popular, but arable-focused, actions like CIPM4, CAHL2, CSAM2 weren't allowed?
📉The second chart reprices the 10 most lucrative SFI23/24 actions at SFI26 rates (i.e. what the actions would have been worth in SFI26 vs what they are paying out under the SFI23/24 rates). Herbal leys would fall from £177m to £104m and winter bird food from £86m to £66m.
That links to the final chart which shows average agreement size, allowing an estimate of how many agreements the £230m Window 2 budget will cover. The SFI23/24 average was £21k; the scrapped plans and management payment were 13.4% of last year's SFI spend; the three rate cuts take off another 11.1%. That gives an expected agreement size of £15.8k. That would tally against the published Window 1 agreement size of £10k, covering mostly sub-50ha farms. At £15.8k on average, Window 2 would fund roughly 14,500 agreements against perhaps 40,000 farms who could be eligible, so nearly ⅔ may miss out.
⏳ All that would seem to point to the fact that Window 2 may well run out pretty quickly. DEFRA's (very helpful) new 25/50/75% updates come through as people submit applications, so as with Window 1 we could well get the first updates within days of the opening on 22nd September.
👏 If you want to be prepared, Soil Benchmark's new SFI Shepherd tool can help you plan which actions each field on a farm is eligble for, avoid incompatible actions, and compare different draft applications.
🗓️ My co-founder Benjamin is running five 30-minute sessions at 1pm each day next week, from getting started on Monday to SFI26 planning on the Friday. Sign up here: https://t.ly/-6Rg1
Plus all 71 SFI26 actions are on our site with what's changed, what each stacks with and what it paid last year: https://t.ly/vBT5C
