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TL;DR:
โ๏ธ ย 6,000 new SFI agreements during Oct-Dec (32,200 overall)
๐ฐ ย ยฃ663m total annual value (+20.6% / ยฃ113m since Q3)
๐ฅ 80% of payments come from just 12 actions (out of 102!)
๐ถ ย Vast majority of new options are not being taken-up
๐ Complexity is slowing SFI roll-out
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โDepartment for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs's latest hashtag#SustainableFarmingIncentive (SFI) figures for the final three months of 2024 are out, revealing how Englandโs flagship farm payment scheme is progressing.
Iโve dug into the numbers so you donโt have to - hereโs my take:
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๐ด๓ ง๓ ข๓ ฅ๓ ฎ๓ ง๓ ฟ Regional DisparityLincolnshire, East Yorkshire, and Northumberland lead in % signed up.Soil Benchmark is supporting many of these farms; we now cover 735,000ha (22% of the 3.27m ha in SAM1).๐ Richard has pulled together some great ๐บ๏ธ to visualise this๐
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๐พ ย Bottleneck uncorked...The RPA seems to have started getting new agreements up and running again, with 6,000 in Q4 (vs. 900 in Q3).
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๐ ย ...but still much slower than SFI23SFI23 saw 23,200 farms sign up in its first 9 months ๐
In six months, only 6,900 farms have signed up for the latest iteration (SFI Extended Offer aka SFI24) โฑ๏ธ
If it was just a bottleneck, wouldnโt take-up have bounced back faster? ๐
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It seems like the changes have fundamentally made SFI24 less popular than SFI23 was:
๐ฑ Too Many Niche Options?In SFI23, nearly all 23 actions were popular. 6 months in, only 3 actions were worth less than ยฃ1m in total claims.In contrast, SFI24 added 80+ new actions, and most are being ignored by farmers.
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๐งฎ Let's break it down:The 6,900 SFI24 agreements are worth ยฃ130m in total:
๐ฅ ยฃ76m comes from the original SFI23 actions retained in SFI24
๐ฅ ยฃ46m comes from just 11 of the new SFI24 actions โ things like PRF1 (variable rate nutrients; ยฃ4m), SOH3 (summer cover crops; ยฃ3m), and HEF1 (historic farm buildings; ยฃ25m).
๐ฅ That leaves 66 actions barely used (<ยฃ550k each). 8 unused.
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Most are niche actions only relevant to a handful of farms:๐ OFM6 (Organic Top Fruit ๐): Only 5 farms signed up (ยฃ19k total claim).
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๐ฐ Is Complexity Putting Farmers Off?Farmers can still just sign up for the popular SFI23 actions, but tens of thousands clearly are being put off - likely by all the niche actions making the process unnecessarily complex.
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๐ Should DEFRA Simplify?Would SFI be better stripped back to the 30 or so most popular options?
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๐ป Should they push platforms like Land App / Oko Ag to help farmers navigate the complexity while keeping the wide range of options?
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๐คทโ๏ธ Is this just DEFRA's way of making work for Land Agents - just like theyโre helping out Farm Accountants with their IHT changes ๐คฃ
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๐ค What do you think Steve Reed MP should do? Is complexity the issue, or is something else causing take-up to stall? Let me know in the comments
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๐ Full data here: https://t.ly/I641x
