Defra’s decision to suddenly shut its sustainable farming scheme exposes a number of hard truths about fixing our broken food system. By David Burrows.
On Tuesday last week the sustainable farming incentive (SFI) snapped shut. The budget for the 2024 SFI, which pays farmers in England to manage their land to protect soil, restore hedgerows and boost nature recovery, had been “successfully allocated”, said food security and rural affairs minister David Zeichner. The plan is to reopen a new SFI after the government spending review is published in June.
This came as a shock. Cash flow will be affected. So too birds and bees. Farmers are furious. Organic producers outraged. NGOs are having nightmares. Indeed, as Julia Aglionby, professor of agricultural economy at the University of Cumbria, noted there are a number of questions this throws up, not least what does this mean for nature recovery and climate resilience?
Skimming through the farming press on Friday there was plenty of coverage of the potential fall out for farms, farmers, nature and land. The working relationship between the sector and Defra hangs by a thread. “Predicting the size and ambition of any future environmental scheme now feels like a fool’s game,” suggested Farmers Weekly editor Andrew Meredith.
Speaking of which, on page 14 of his paper there was an analysis of whether Reform UK “can be trusted to deliver for farming”. These anti-net-zero political seeds are not just being planted; they’re being sprayed with copious amount of chemical fertilisers. Apparently “[m]any British farmers are attracted to Reform UK’s rural and farming policies”, which include an increase of the farming budget from £2.4bn to £3bn, but climate-related farming subsidies would be scrapped. To hell with the extreme weather, polluted rivers and bio-dying-versity: in Nigel they increasingly trust. Or rather Rupert Lowe: “I think [he] is politician of the year,” said one of the three farmers FW interviewed.
Franklin talking
Thank goodness there is still space for voices of reason like Jo Franklin. The arable and sheep farmer from Hertfordshire produced one of the best opinion pieces I’ve read on food and farming. And I have read a lot (and written quite a few too). Franklin writes about the “mistake” farming has always made is believing it is different from mining, steel and fishing – all “manual, dangerous and dirty primary industries”, much like farming.
“[…] we cost the government £2.4bn and contribute less than £1bn in corporation tax (even including forests and fisheries), while producing goods that are currently available to buy in,” she writes. The embedded environmental and social baggage of producing imported food is left overseas – out of sight out of mind, while farmers here continue to go out of theirs.
A survey published by the National Farmers Union (NFU) last week ahead of the SFI announcement showed farm business confidence has dropped lower than ever. “This is another shattering blow to English farms, delivered yet again with no warning, no understanding of the industry and a complete lack of compassion or care,” said NFU president Tom Bradshaw, before adding a threat designed to hang heavy in the ammonia-filled air: “The awful dilemma now faced by many farmers is whether to turn their backs on environmental work and just farm as hard as they can to survive.”
Cynics armed with historical biodiversity loss, river pollution and carbon emission statistics might suggest the sector has yet to really face up to its environmental impacts (the shiny new tractors driven into major cities hardly cry skint, suggest sceptics). However, this is a food system that has forced many farmers to plough this intensive production furrow – and may well continue to do so.
Farmers are stuck on a “treadmill”, forced to scale up or intensify if they merely want to stand still, noted the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission (FFCC) in its ‘Paying the price’ report last week. They have “little power because successive governments have allowed big food and big ag corporations, many of them multinationals, to dominate the supply chain”.
Paltry poultry prices
Consider for example the impact of this consolidation on the UK poultry sector, which is now founded on hyper-intensification, wafer-thin margins and high pollution. With yet more cheap chicken shops in the offing (Canada’s Mary Brown’s Chicken says the UK will be a “very, very positive market” for the brand, joining the likes of Wingstop and Popeyes here) there is little sign of pressures easing.
These fast food brands are competing with the likes of KFC, who are already reneging on their sustainability commitments when it comes to animal welfare. Protestors turned up to 11 of the chain’s outlets last week to demonstrate over its backtracking on the better chicken commitment. It can’t be long until others to have signed up, like Burger King, Compass and Greggs, admit to delays, or even defeat.
Most chickens are bred to grow big and fast, with many ready for market in just 33 days. This minimises costs but can have serious consequences for bird welfare. Slow the process down (to, say, 48 days) and you get birds that have better gait, fewer injuries and are less prone to disease, according to Compassion in World Farming (CIWF). But these better birds cost more to produce, so who will pay for it?
This disconnect was also picked by a farmer in FW recently, who had been trying to find a market for his better meat in the form of “zero-carbon lamb” but has “hit a brick wall. Other than direct sales, there appears to be no market, no labelling system, and so no premium for my product,” he wrote, “so what on earth are we all working to meet carbon targets for?”
As one academic told me recently: big ag and big food have worked hard to have their cake and eat it by pressuring farmers to adopt greener practices (and making sustainability claims) but not paying the (premium) price in return. His comments came on the back of speeches I sat through by various bigwigs at the Sustainable Food Conference (SFC) in January. There was no lack of energy or enthusiasm for change in the room and everyone was talking about farmers – but too few farmers were there, so who has been listening to them?
The real incomes of farmers in the current ‘broken’ system are concerning. The FFCC has calculated that incomes “have barely risen for 50 years, as the value of their wheat, milk and meat has been eroded through pressure from imports and the rise of ultra-processed food”. And now supermarkets, manufacturers and foodservice corporates are demanding they also reduce emissions, employ regenerative practices and face up to a few years of potentially lower yields while everything beds in and the system ‘fixes’.
Confidence or ignorance?
At the SFC Sainsbury’s chief executive Simon Roberts claimed he wanted to bring “more confidence” into the supply chain, through a “change in mindset and focus and a fair baseline”. Issues in categories like eggs had “underlined the fragility of short-term thinking and short-term ways of working”. That’s what his shareholders demand, though, so I am not convinced.
Neither was Riverford Organic founder Guy Singh-Watson. “These events rob me of the will to live,” he wrote for Wicked Leeks following his appearance on one of the panels. “As is so often the case at corporate events, individually the people in the room are not monsters – but the combined impact of their endeavours is monstrous. We will never have truly sustainable food until there is humility and diversity on these stages, and challenge from their audiences.”
Voluntary sustainable farming initiatives are everywhere. They are all-too easy to pop these days, however. Consider the one just launched by Waitrose. The supermarket is offering up £0.5m to help British farmers cut their emissions. More than 2,000 farms in its supply chain were encouraged to apply, which equates to £250 per farm. Or, as one expert noted, 20p per tonne of greenhouse gases across the supermarket’s 2.4MtCO2 in scope 3.
“I’m getting irritated by all these fund announcements which ultimately add paperwork to farmers instead of actually embedding better payment terms into procurement contracts, which requires better rates paid to growers in return for measurably improved impact,” one consultant and former supermarket director told me.
According to Joe Stanley, author and co-presenter of the ‘Wheat from the chaff’ podcast, the closure of the SFI marked a “disastrous day” for the UK. “This government has blown our own legally binding targets around nature and the environment out of the water because farmers are now going to have one choice, really, and that is to intensify production; to farm harder in order to try and scratch a living from the land in a marked environment which is entirely stacked against them.”
Intensify or die
And this, sadly, is where we are in March 2025. Supermarkets will continue to press farmers to act on sustainability – to “do the heavy lifting “as Stanley put it – and the look to reap the rewards, financial, environmental (through reducing scope 3 emissions) and reputational. They are desperate to look like they care while maintaining the status quo; few saw any irony in the move by Tesco, Aldi and Lidl to support farmers in their dispute over inheritance tax (IHT) changes.
“Supermarkets may have a lot to lose if IHT reforms lead to lots of farmers leaving the sector,” wrote Kamran Mahroof, associate professor of supply chain analytics at the University of Bradford. “Either customers need to be prepared to pay more for their food, or supermarkets need to revisit their pricing strategies. Something has to give,” he added, “and it appears that this time it cannot be the farmers or agricultural workers”.
There had been hope that government would be the one to give – in the shape of several new food and farming policies, underpinned by support for truly sustainable farming, producing healthy food. Ruthlessly cutting off any more funds for such practices suggests not. Defra’s Zeichner used his speech at the SFC to tell everyone how he wanted to work together – and it was government’s role to do that (thoughts echoed by his director-general Emily Miles).
He is now in danger of losing the room completely. Labour’s current mantra is to ‘build baby build’, as it looks to grow the economy (seemingly at any cost). The NFU wants to sow baby sow, while big ag and big (and fast) food want to grow baby grow. Where does that leave healthy, nutritious, food that enhances biodiversity and mitigates climate change?
“We need to show our industry can be a positive contributor to the economy without costing the environment,” wrote Franklin. The same goes for manufacturers, retailers and foodservice – and also the government. There is a food system to fix.
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