Financial support for farmers and growers to mitigate the cost of chemical fertilisers and to implement IPM programmes on field crops is to be made available as part of the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) launched at the end of June, Defra secretary of state George Eustice has announced.
Speaking at the Groundswell regenerative agriculture conference in Hertfordshire at the end of June, Mr Eustice said that although the launch of the SFI focused on soil, this was only the first module.
“We’ve started with soil because we know soil reacts quickly and.….is absolutely central to successful farm production,” he said.
“We are planning additional modules on nutrients which will build on the work we’re doing on soils and help farmers deal with the cost of synthetically manufactured fertilisers.”
He added there would also be a module on integrated pest management (IPM), which he said had been ‘slow to come of age and slow to realise the potential’ since it was touted in the 1990s as a way to reduce reliance on chemical crop protection products.
“What we want to do is to bridge the risk and help farmers manage the risk of embracing some of these techniques,” he said.
He pointed to some of the IPM techniques demonstrated in field crops at Groundswell, such as companion planting, intercropping and trap cropping and the creation of habitats for natural predators of crop pests.
“A lot of the culture behind integrated pest management is the patience of giving natural systems the chance to get on top of a situation,” he said. “Sometimes there’s a cost to that, and that’s why government needs to recognise and reward those who embrace these types of new approaches.”
Mr Eustice also shared his sense of being freed from the restrictions he felt EU membership had imposed on UK agriculture policy.
“We’ve got a great opportunity now to do things differently, to have a different approach, [including] the way that government agencies interact with farmers,” he said. “For me, it’s really important we change the way we run the schemes, creating the space for innovation, to trial new things and tailor them to an individual landscape and even an individual farm.
“With the launch of the SFI we’re trying really hard to make sure we keep the principles of simplicity and [to be] far less prescriptive than the old schemes.”