We look at the positive impact this could have for nature on farmland.
5 min read
In March, the UK Government published the long-awaited Land Use Framework, which contained a promising commitment to spatially target funding for nature-friendly farming from 2027. This document sets out how potentially competing pressures on land in England can be managed, from development to habitat creation. The headline message is that there is enough land to meet all these different targets and needs, but only if land use is planned carefully to make the most of win-wins for nature, climate, and other priorities. The Framework is a good first step towards this planning and sets out how some kinds of land use will need to change by 2050.
One of these land uses is farming. In the UK, 69% of land is managed for farming. So it’s critical that we transition to nature-friendly farming in order to: halt and reverse declines in biodiversity; save threatened species like Curlews and Turtle Doves from national extinction; reduce and mitigate the impacts of climate change; and make our food production resilient for the future.
In England, this transition is being supported by public funding for farmers to manage land in more nature and climate-friendly ways, through the Environmental Land Management (or ELM) schemes.
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These schemes pay farmers and land managers to choose and carry out specific actions on their land to create ‘public goods’, such as boosting biodiversity and local species populations, and reducing pollution.
To make the most of limited funding, many of these payments are most effective if they are targeted in specific places. For example, actions to create habitat for Curlews are most effective when done in areas where there are already populations or potential for populations to establish. Likewise, actions to reduce water pollution can make the most impact if targeted in the most polluted areas.
The Land Use Framework and data underpinning it can identify the locations with the most potential and fewest trade-offs, and the design of ELM schemes can be tweaked to target payments in these areas. This means we would see more focussed and impactful delivery, more efficient use of the farming budget, and more rapid progress towards the UK’s statutory nature and climate targets.
It will be important that this targeting is evidence-based and draws on data in the Land Use Framework and Local Nature Recovery Strategies, keeping the funding sharply focussed on delivering public goods like clean water, clean air and pollinator populations.
But will targeting alone be enough to secure the transition to nature and climate-friendly farming? Targeting is a positive step in the right direction, but needs to come with two broader strategic shifts in how funding for nature-friendly farming is spent.
The entry-level, least ambitious part of ELMs, the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI), has had high uptake but its ‘pick and mix’ design has meant the pattern of environmental actions it has paid for is driven by what is most financially attractive rather than what nature needs. This year’s SFI will introduce some features to help guide the pattern of action, but next year’s version needs to introduce a package of actions aimed at restoring wildlife on farms. This would make delivery for nature more effective and easier for farmers.
The other key shift we would like to see is a scaling up of the more ambitious element of ELMs, the higher tier schemes, including Countryside Stewardship Higher Tier.
This scheme funds the most ambitious farm-level action, like restoring species-rich grasslands, creating habitat for waders, and rewetting peatlands. Farmers involved will receive expert advice and funding for long-term action, so these schemes ultimately deliver more for nature, climate and farm business resilience.
Despite these advantages, resource constraints have limited how many farmers and land managers can access the scheme. We urgently need the UK Government to scale up access to the Countryside Stewardship Higher Tier. To do this means making sure enough of the overall budget is invested in it, that IT systems are fit for purpose, and that there is enough expert advice capacity to support more applications.
Targeting payments is a positive step for nature that can go hand in hand with these two shifts. With the Land Use Framework guiding how delivery mechanisms like ELMs are used and enough funding, progress towards nature and climate targets can be made more rapidly and efficiently, maximising the win-wins across multiple priorities.
