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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment his Department has made of the potential impact of the withdrawal of new Sustainable Farming Incentive of agreements on the rural economy.

This Government is proud to have secured the largest budget for sustainable food production in our country’s history, with £5 billion being spent to support farmers over a 2-year period. SFI is an important offer, but it is part of a wider package - across England, 50,000 farm businesses and over half of farmed land are already in agri-environmental schemes.

The department publish regular statistics on Farm Business Income. Farming evidence packs have been recently updated including key statistics and farm performance. These set out an extensive range of data to provide an overview of agriculture in the UK. On the 11th of March 2025 we published forecasts which suggest that average Farm Business Income has risen in 2024/25 across all farm types with the exception of cereal farms.