News

Following the start-of-the-year announcement by the DEFRA Secretary on schemes and coming farming policy, DEFRA is hosting several webinars to brief advisers and farmers. The Farming and Countryside Programme (FCP) will be holding an adviser specific webinar on Monday 22nd January: Advisor Webinar - the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI24) Tickets, Mon 22 Jan 2024 at 15:00 | Eventbrite. DEFRA are hosting a webinar on 26th January. Janet Hughes and others from the RPA will be providing an...

As a striking achievement, the United Kingdom is now about halfway to its net zero target for 2050, the first G7 country to do so. With the lags in producing statistics, the headline territorial measure for UK-produced greenhouse gas emissions in 2022 has now been reported at 51 per cent of their level in 1990, lower than before the pandemic and expected to have fallen further in 2023. With much of this achieved by increased renewable energy reducing the share of fossil fuel in electricity...

Andrew Liddiment of near Leominster, Herefordshire referred himself to the CAAV’s disciplinary processes following a criminal conviction for sexual assault. The CAAV Executive, sitting as a Disciplinary Panel, reviewed all papers submitted and, as authorised for such a case under the Bylaws, determined that the seriousness of the matter for the reputation of a Fellow and of the Association warranted his expulsion from membership of the Association with immediate effect from 19th...

The end of year closure of the SFI Application Portal meant that all applications that had been started but not submitted by then are treated as withdrawn. The Application Portal has now re-opened. We understand that a number of applications have already been started using re-opened Portal and a small number of applications have now been submitted. This is seen to suggest that the system is again functional.

As Members will be aware, BPS ends on 31st December 2023, succeeded by delinked payments managing the run-off funds of the scheme. For more background to the scheme, see our recent Podcast). Over the past month, farm businesses have received an Information Statement, setting out the basis on which their delinked payments would be calculated. A business’ reference data – the gross payment received across 2020, 2021 and 2022 – will be able to be transferred to another party in early 2024....

This article by Jeremy Moody first appeared in the CAAV e-Briefing of 14th December 2023 Forget England’s Agricultural Transition and the coming end of Basic Payment in the other parts of the United Kingdom. While those dominate conversation and thinking, the most striking policy change for much rural land across the UK goes far beyond where the environmental parts of the new policies might seem to go. The international “30by30” commitment means that 30 per cent of land and 30 per cent of...

The RPA has published guidance on the second round of the Improving Farm Productivity grant. Budgets of £15 million for each have been allocated for solar equipment and for automation and robotics. Grants of between £15,000 and £100,000 will be available for farmers to fund a range of solar equipment, at an intervention rate of 25%. The grant will therefore be able to fund solar projects which have a total cost of between £60,000 and £400,000. For robotic and automated equipment, grants of...

The Forestry Commission has updated the grant manual for the England Woodland Creation Offer, providing more detail for when applicants can move land from Countryside Stewardship into the EWCO scheme. See section 3.3.2 here: England Woodland Creation Offer application form - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).

At the end of December, the RPA will be closing the SFI application portal, to allow for annual updates to be undertaken. Any unsubmitted SFI applications will need to be restarted when the system re-opens in January. The key points are: SFI 2023 applications should be submitted by 31 December In order for applicants to apply in 2024, RPA will close the service for new applications for a few days, between 27 December and 1 January Customers with an SFI application they have started but...

This article by Jeremy Moody first appeared in the CAAV e-Briefing of 7th December 2023 The area-based Basic Payment Scheme ends this month for England. The RPA has just made the overwhelming majority of the second balancing payments for 2023, so that English farmers have now had almost two thirds of the direct payments possible under the Agricultural Transition. The statutory instrument revoking the Scheme and ending cross compliance has been published together with another one setting 60 day...

This article by Jeremy Moody first appeared in the CAAV e-Briefing of 30th November 2023 While having more Fellows and Probationers than ever, the CAAV is conscious that rural practices feel an acute shortage of staff for the growing range and volume of work coming in. With work growing faster than we are, this feels more than the general shortage of staff in the wider economy. The CAAV has been tackling this with a round of meetings with some employers and the universities to see how we can...

The Government has published a range of documents in preparation for the implementation of Biodiversity Net Gain in England in January 2024: Draft statutory instruments, amending existing legislation and making provision for the Biodiversity Gain Site Register, excepted sites and irreplaceable habitatsUpdate guidance for BNG, collected here: Biodiversity net gain - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)A revised Biodiversity MetricDraft planning practice guidance on BNG We will follow the announcements with a...

This article by Jeremy Moody first appeared in the CAAV e-Briefing of 23rd November 2023 The let sector covers a third of England’s farmland, still with many 1986 Act tenancies but more than half on FBTs, and still large areas of Wales and Scotland. In addition to that scale, it provides a critical means of flexibility in farm structures, entry, expansion and exit from farming, relieving owners of the need to farm and enabling farmers to have the use of land without having to buy it. Its...

On Tuesday night Jeremy Moody was formally bestowed Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Agricultural University (RAU), its highest honour, in a ceremony at the RAU attended by Chair of the Governing Council, Dame Fiona Reynolds, as well as the Vice Chancellor, Earl Bathurst as Vice President and many of the senior leadership team at the RAU. Jeremy Moody was commended to the meeting by William Leschallas. The event was also attended by friends, family and alumni – including the current CAAV...

This article by Jeremy Moody first appeared in the CAAV e-Briefing of 16th November 2023 At least the UK does not have volcanoes. Iceland, a land still being forged in fire, is watching in awe at the risk of an eruption 25 miles from its capital, evacuating a town before its destruction. In Europe’s other volcanic area, the Phlegraean Fields near Naples and Vesuvius have just had a 4.2 earthquake. Here, we are only following Iceland in the more benign search for geothermal energy prospects in...

DEFRA is holding two upcoming SFI Webinars:20th November, for Livestock and Grassland Farmers4th December, for Arable and Horticultural Farmers...

This article by Jeremy Moody first appeared in the CAAV e-Briefing of 9th November 2023 Speaking to the North East Chamber of Commerce, Keir Starmer returned strongly to his party conference theme of the vigour that a Labour Government would bring to secure new housing and infrastructure as part of encouraging economic growth (see webnote). It chimes quite closely with the legislation that the Conservative Government is putting in place and, even while repeating the intention to “bulldoze”...

This article by Jeremy Moody first appeared in the CAAV e-Briefing of 2nd November 2023 The variability of British weather has long been a topic of conversation but our extreme weather events now come “not single spies but in battalions”. Hundreds of acres of Lincolnshire farmland are still flooded and Angus had at least 11½” of rain in October, the wettest since its records started in 1891. As rain falls on saturated land, we see surface water flooding as well as river flooding –...

This article by Jeremy Moody first appeared in the CAAV e-Briefing of 26th October 2023 It is only October and we already have our second “named” storm. Storm Babet has repeatedly battered and saturated Angus, Aberdeenshire and neighbouring counties with still more rain falling after silage bales had been washed out to sea. Flooding has gone wider, whether Framlingham, Derby, Retford, parts of the Welsh border and now the central south coast. This is the present taste of the more volatile,...

The Government has announced that the closing date for new applications to the Green Gas Support Scheme (GGSS) is to be extended to 31st March 2028. The extension is in response to difficulties experienced by project sponsors in commissioning anaerobic digestion plant and in securing feedstock. The extension is part of the Government's response to the mid-scheme review. Further details of the response will follow in due course. The policy framework for biomethane following the closure of the...

Applications open on the 23th October for the Countryside Stewardship Facilitation Fund 2024. More information is available here: Facilitation Fund 2024: Countryside Stewardship - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).