Agriculture Act 2020

(asked on 10th January 2022) - View Source

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps he has taken to implement the provisions in the Agriculture Act 2020 to deliver public money for public goods.


Answered by
Victoria Prentis Portrait
Victoria Prentis
Attorney General
This question was answered on 18th January 2022

We are implementing three new schemes that reward farmers and land managers for producing public goods: The Sustainable Farming Incentive, Local Nature Recovery and Landscape Recovery. Our approach to environmental land management is the cornerstone of our new agricultural policy and will be realised through a combination of schemes using public money to reward farmers and land managers for delivering environmentally sustainable actions. The schemes are intended to provide a powerful vehicle for achieving the goals of the 25 Year Environment Plan and commitment to net zero emissions by 2050, while supporting our rural economy.

The Sustainable Farming Incentive will pay farmers for actions they take, going beyond regulatory requirements, to manage their land in an environmentally sustainable way. In 2021 we launched the Sustainable Farming Incentive pilot and received over 900 applications. The first agreements have started and will run until 2024 when the full Sustainable Farming Incentive scheme offer will be available. This year we will start to rollout core elements of that scheme.

The Local Nature Recovery scheme will pay for actions that support local nature recovery and deliver local environmental priorities; making sure the right things are delivered in the right places. We plan to make an early version of the scheme available to a limited number of people in 2023 as part of our plans for testing and rolling out the scheme. We will then roll out the scheme across the whole country by the end of 2024.

Landscape Recovery will support the delivery of landscape and ecosystem recovery through long-term, large-scale projects, including projects to restore wilder landscapes in places where that’s appropriate, large-scale tree planting and peatland restoration projects. We will pilot Landscape Recovery between 2022-24 through initiating at least 10 large-scale projects.

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