SFI update: how much has been spent and what actions are winning?

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

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has just released the latest stats on take-up (to 1st July) of the Sustainable Farming Incentive (hashtag#SFI - the main part of the government's revamped farm payments scheme which rewards farmers with 'public money for public goods'). Since my previous update post, there have been a few big changes in the adoption rates across various actions. Below I run through some of the highlights

📈 Uptake continues to grow:

💰 Overall SFI annual value: +65% to £492.9m. (That's still only 20% of the £2.4bn farm budget. Legacy 'de-linked' payments, based on claims in the old BPS system, still remain the biggest part of farm support as SFI is phased in. Presumably the 2025-27 reductions to de-linked payments will be decided each year based on SFI take-up to ensure the overall budget isn't re-claimed by HM Treasury)

👥 Overall number of agreements: +67% to 23,200

🏆 Devon, East Anglia and my home patch of North Yorkshire continue to have highest uptake with 25% of all agreements between them. (DEFRA helpfully note that 'Inner London - East' still lags the field with 0 agreements 😂)

🚀 Big Winners:

The 3 actions below remain most lucrative, and still represent c.43% of all SFI payments:

🍀 SAM3 (herbal leys): +67% to £111.5m

🐧 AHL2 (winter bird food): +66% to £54.3m

🥜 NUM3 (legume fallow): +69% to £30.1m

📋 Planning actions continue to represent a popular 'easy-win', with 16% of the budget (£80.4m)

🪱 SAM1 is included in ¾ agreements (17,000) covering 2.65m hectares (that's about 30% of the 8.8m ha of English farmland). SAM1 requires farms to create an annual Soil Management Plan. Soil Benchmark are proud that since we launched in November we've become the go-to tool for these: 1,600 farms covering 438,000ha have already used our Soil Sage platform to create their Plans. Head to plan.soilbenchmark.com to get started; it only requires an SBI number.

🙋 Worth nothing that all these figures still just cover the original hashtag#SFI23 actions, as the updated actions in the hashtag#SFI24 offer only went live later in July (apparently the first agreements have now been signed).

🔍 Looking Ahead:

Momentum behind SFI continues to build (helped by Steve Reed committing to not 'overturn the apple cart'), despite some glitches with SFI24 roll-out. It has many more actions than SFI23 (104 vs 24). Maybe this means more flexibility for farms to tailor agreements to their needs, but I suspect the main winners will be the consultants now needed to decipher the extra jargon.

😲 One final (really very nerdy) note: In their latest budget, DEFRA quietly 'reprofiled' £200m which it looks like they took from the 23/24 capital grant pot and might put into SFI if take-up is good. Details here: https://rb.gy/mlhueq - perhaps George, Abi or Janet can explain if I've understood correctly 🤷

Full data: https://rb.gy/1a1c58