Watch: an SFI special from Oxford
Earlier this month, we attended both the Oxford Real Farming Conference and the Oxford Farming Conference (OFC).
In this post we'll share 2 videos.
The agricultural transition and environmental land management
The first video is a session hosted by Jim Egan and Jonathan Baker at the OFC.
Jim is Sustainable Farming Adviser at Frontier Agriculture (sponsor of the event) and Jonathan is Deputy Director in Defra's Farming and Countryside Programme.
Jim sets the scene for environmental land management. He gives a practical overview of the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI).
Jonathan shares the ambitions, plans and progress of the programme, with a summary of the recent Agricultural Transition Plan update.
The session includes a Q&A.
Farmer opinion
The second video features clips from the Oxford Real Farming Conference, including a discussion on Soil Health at Scale with Iain Tolhurst MBE.
We video also includes interviews with farmers John Geldard and Ben Taylor-Davies.
John gives his opinion on the work of the team and Ben describes his experience with SFI and plans for his farm.
Learn more
Jonathan recently posted a summary of the ATP update on the blog. It includes details of scheme payment rates, premium payments, new actions and plans for a single application service.
If you'd like to explore how SFI can work for you, visit our dedicated site. If you apply for an SFI agreement today, you will receive your first payment 4 months after your agreement starts. After that, you’ll be paid every 3 months, so you'll have a regular, reliable income.
If you're ready to apply, colleagues from the Rural Payments Agency (RPA) produced a step-by-step guide on YouTube.
Finally, we're publishing a series of posts on the new SFI actions by sector so look out for those. By subscribe to the Farming blog you'll receive an email notification whenever a new post is published.
