SFI26 Window 2 opened at 10:07 this morning and closed at 15:54 - £233m allocated in under six hours.
Ahead of it opening, it was great to see both Farmers Weekly and Charlotte Smith on R4 Farming Today pick up our analysis that two thirds of farms wanting an agreement were likely to miss out. A few people asked for the workings, so here they are 👇
✴️ 1. The funding pot
💷 £230 million. That includes an extra £50m of drought support and whatever went unallocated in Window 1 (not enough to move the dial, I understand).
✴️ 2. What the average agreement might cost
🧮 SFI23/24 averaged about £20.4k a year. Take out the scrapped planning actions and the management payment. Then apply the rate changes, again weighted by how popular each action was - popular ones like herbal leys were cut by up to 40%, while the only rate rises were on five relatively niche moorland actions.
That gives an average agreement of about £15,800, assuming the action mix stays stable. It may well be an underestimate - I reckon a lot of farms will have tried to fill their boots given SFI26 is limited to one agreement per farm, unlike SFI23/24.
✴️ 3. At £15.8k, the budget buys about 14,500 agreements
£230m ÷ £15,800 = 14,557.
✴️ 4. How many farms will want one?
🚜 Window 2 was open to all farms over 3ha in England. DEFRA's most recent stats say there are 82,000 farms in England over 5ha. Take off the 42,100 already in SFI at 1st September, plus other Window 1 applicants. Add back the 12,000 or so with SFI23 agreements ending before the end of February 27 who could re-apply.
82,000 - 42,100 + 12,000 = 52,100 potential applicants. Round that down to 40,000 to allow for farms that simply are not interested, or are otherwise ineligible.
✴️ 5. Which means roughly two thirds may miss out
14,557 ÷ 40,000 = 36% potentially successful.
✴️ 6. And so it was a bun fight
⏱️ One agent told me yesterday he had 62 applications ready to go. There were reports of agencies cancelling all holidays to make sure they got their clients in. Richard King at The Andersons Centre compared it in the Farmers Weekly article to “the rush for Oasis tickets”, with “all the agents poised with their fingers over the submit button”.
As with Window 1, DEFRA promised updates when 25%, 50% and 75% of the budget was allocated. They came quicker and quicker through the day:
10:07 - Window 2 opens
11:52 - 25% gone
13:11 - 50% gone
14:40 - 75% gone
15:54 - Window 2 closed
£233m spent in under six hours shows that, as predicted, the scheme was very oversubscribed. There will be a lot of furious farmers who have just had a big hole blown in their budgets for next year (🤞 there is an SFI27 they can get into). After a torrid summer for most farms in England, for those who have missed out this will be the last thing they needed.
It will be interesting to see whether DEFRA spin this as a success story - the scheme was so popular - or recognise the problems it exposes, and the very sticky situation it leaves a lot of the farms who have missed out in. How will they respond?
✴️ 7. Well done to everyone who got one in
🪖 Especially all the farmers and agronomists who used our new SFI Shepherd tool to plan their applications.
For those who did get an agreement - and those with existing SFI23/24 agreements - we are building SFI Shepherd out to handle the ongoing compliance once agreements are live, not just the application. It is part of Soil Benchmark's shift into a full farm management platform covering not just soils, but nutrient management, spray plans, costings, and now SFI applications and compliance too.
