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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what estimate his Department has made of the number of farmers who will leave the industry under the exit scheme of the Land Management System.

Our proposed lump sum exit scheme will provide support for farmers in England who wish to exit the industry.

In 2018, we undertook a survey of around 1,000 farmers as part of our planning for the Agriculture Act. Six per cent of those surveyed said they wanted to leave farming but felt they were not able to do so at that time. Financial reasons were given as the main barrier.

There will be a range of factors which will affect individual farmers’ decisions about whether they wish to take the lump sum and exit farming. The consultation will be used to gather further evidence about likely uptake.

Our consultation can be found here:

https://consult.defra.gov.uk/agricultural-policy/lump-sum-and-delinked-payments-england/. This consultation is open until 11 August 2021.