You may well have heard about the Government's Environmental Land Management schemes. These will affect us all but in particular, the lives and livelihoods of farmers. They constitute a 3 tier Government reform linking to its 25 year Environment Plan to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050. Farmers and landowners are to be rewarded for managing their land to benefit nature and the environment..
- A Sustainable Farming Incentive will pay farmers to manage their land in an environmentally sustainable way.
It launches this year (2022).
- The Local Nature Recovery scheme will pay for actions that support local nature recovery, encouraging farmers to work together to improve their local environment. This is to be piloted in 2022 and launched in 2024. It can include leaving parts of land for wildlife; avoiding field disturbance from March to July to protect for example our endangered population of ground nesting birds such as skylark, curlew and lapwing, and It can help to increase native wildflowers, thereby attracting more pollinating insects.
- The Landscape Recovery scheme will support larger changes to land-use and habitat restoration, potentially creating new nature reserves and floodplains, and restoring old wetlands and woodlands, while creating ecosystem recovery through long-term projects, such as restoring wilder landscapes with appropriate, large-scale tree planting and peatland or salt marsh restoration. This scheme will be piloted in 2022 and launch in 2024
Tom Bradshaw, Vice President of the NFU, remarked: “British farmers are proud to produce climate-friendly food to some of the highest standards in the world, alongside maintaining and protecting the great British countryside“. He explained how the NFU believes our sustainable food production and delivery of environmental benefits can work but farmers need much more detail on how this can be achieved. They are concerned that these schemes, alongside new Government trade deals, will reduce home grown food production in the UK, meaning we need to import more food from countries whose production standards, animal welfare and pesticide use are illegal for UK farmers.
For those of you who are part of a farming family, we know these are uncertain times. We all need good food and our local Staffordshire Moorlands environment matters to us all. We would be interested in your views about these new reforms. Please do get in touch at
We can also provide information, if you are interested, about Solar options for farm buildings. This is available for non-farmers too for their home or business. Please contact