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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, for what reason the date of introduction for the Sustainable Farming Incentive organic food standard is not until 2025.

We recognise the benefits that organic farming can offer to the wider environment. Currently, organic producers can join the Countryside Stewardship scheme in addition to a Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) agreement. In SFI they are well placed to adopt the higher levels of ambition in the soils standards and receive a higher level of payment.

We have confirmed that an organic standard is currently being developed as part of the roll out of the SFI. Our current plan is that all levels of the SFI organic standard will be introduced in 2025. Furthermore, organic farmers will benefit from other standards in development such as Integrated Pest Management due to the specific farming practices they undertake.

We are phasing out Basic Payments over the agricultural transition, which will allow us to progressively roll out new standards and options.