‘We can’t ride this storm’: the English farmers facing uncertainty after sustainability funding runs dry — SkimNews
Get the Energy newsletter
Daily energy & climate — solar, EVs, oil, the policy fights and tech bets shaping the transition. Free.
- The Sustainable Farming Incentive ran out of money by 4pm on Tuesday, just six hours after launching, with farmers comparing the application rush to "the scramble for Oasis tickets."
- Peter Hatley, who runs a 240-hectare family farm in Cambridgeshire, was denied access despite being fully prepared, receiving repeated error messages on the government's portal and a helpline that acknowledged the problems.
- Up to 10,000 farmers with SFI agreements expiring in March 2027 either chose not to apply or could not apply because the funding had been exhausted.
- Hatley says he will reverse 20 years of environmental work and switch to a maize monocrop if SFI funding does not come through, telling the Guardian: "How do I explain to the bank manager that I can't afford to pay my mortgage this month because I put wood pigeons and birds of prey first?"
- Farmers cite compounding pressures including fertilizer costs soaring because of the war in Iran and a run of extreme weather—2024's extreme rain, 2025's drought, and 25°C heat at the end of September this year.
- Farming Minister Stephen Morgan defended the scheme, saying nearly £1 billion will be invested over three years and that a £100,000 application cap was designed to create a fairer system for smaller farms, while pledging to explore alternatives to first-come, first-served access.
- The National Farmers' Union is calling on the government to commit now to a 2027 SFI scheme, with vice-president Robyn Munt calling that clarity "critical" for businesses "already questioning whether they can survive the year ahead."
Why it matters: The SFI is the post-Brexit replacement for the EU's common agricultural policy's basic payment scheme, and its first-come-first-served collapse left prepared farmers locked out by technical failures. For growers like Hatley, the immediate trade-off is concrete: 20 years of hedgerows, skylarks and biodiversity work traded for a mortgage-paying maize monocrop, just as fertilizer costs tied to the Iran war and a third consecutive climate-disrupted harvest squeeze margins.
Ask SkimNews
