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Guidance: A summary of the SFI in 2022

Rural Payments Agency

September 2
14:17 2022

The Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) is?the first of 3 new environmental schemes being introduced under the Agricultural Transition Plan. The other 2 schemes are Local Nature Recovery and Landscape Recovery.

SFI aims to help farmers manage land in a way that improves food production and is more environmentally sustainable.

Farmers will be paid to provide public goods, such as:

  • improved water quality
  • biodiversity
  • climate change mitigation
  • animal health and welfare

In 2022, SFI aims to:

  • encourage actions that improve soil health
  • recognise how moorland provides benefits to the public (public goods)
  • improve animal health and welfare by helping farmers with the costs of veterinary advice for livestock

SFI standards agreements

Youll be eligible to apply for an SFI standards agreement if youre a farmer who is eligible for the Basic Payment Scheme (BPS), with land in England. Read more information about eligibility for SFI.

Standards

In 2022, there will be 3 standards available, with different levels and payments. Those are:

Standard Level Payment
Arable and horticultural soils Introductory 22 per hectare
Intermediate 40 per hectare
Improved grassland soils Introductory 28 per hectare
Intermediate 58 per hectare
Moorland Introductory 10.30 per hectare
Additional payment 265 per agreement

There will also be an additional annual payment of 6.15 per hectare (ha) for common land entered into a separate SFI standards agreement.

In the future, more standards will be introduced. Youll be able to add these to your agreement, as well as increase levels and add land.

Read guidance about how SFI standards work.

Agreements

An SFI standards agreement will last for 3 years. You need to have management control of the land entered into the agreement for its 3-year duration. Read the information about eligibility for more details about management control.

Payments

Youll be paid on a quarterly basis, with the first payment usually made mid-way through the 4th month after your agreement starts.

Read more about getting paid for an SFI standards agreement.

Applying for an agreement

SFIapplications opened forBPSeligible farmers from 30 June 2022.

Applications will remain open, so you can apply at a time that works best for you. If its necessary to close applications, this date will be publicised, including on GOV.UK, giving you 6 weeks notice.

Our newSFIapplication service is designed to be quicker and more straightforward for farmers. The service includes some new updates which allow us to automate the checks we need to do and process applications to offer agreements much more quickly than weve previously been able to do. This means you should usually receive your agreement offer within 2 months of submitting your application and in many cases more quickly than that.

Were rolling out the new SFI application service in a controlled way, so we can make sure were able to offer everyone the right level of support during this initial phase. This means that while allBPSeligible farmers can apply forSFI, during the first few weeks of rollout there are 2 ways into the application service for different groups of farmers.

All BPS eligible farmers can now apply for SFI on eligible land outside a common directly online by signing into the Rural Payments service. This includes where you want to apply on land thats in a Countryside Stewardship or Environmental Stewardship agreement.

If you want to apply on common land, you need to contact us first. Well then arrange for you to start your online application in the Rural Payments service as soon as possible. In this case, you can either email us at ruralpayments@defra.gov.uk (using Apply early forSFI as the email subject and including your SBI) or call us on 03000 200 301 (Monday to Friday 8.30am to 5pm, except bank holidays). We will respond to these requests as quickly as possible, and in most cases within 2 weeks.

For more information, read the guidance about how to apply online for anSFIstandards agreement on land outside a common.

If you cannot apply online because you do not have access to the internet or a computer, call us on 03000 200 301 (Monday to Friday, 8.30am to 5pm, except bank holidays).

Capital items funding

The standards will not include any capital items funding in 2022. You can apply for existing capital items funding offers on land parcels entered into an SFI standards agreement, such as Countryside Stewardship capital grants.

In the future, SFI will include capital items funding to help you complete the actions in the standards. More details about this will be published on GOV.UK.

Annual health and welfare review

The annual health and welfare review will provide funding to eligible livestock farmers. This funding will cover the cost of an annual review of your livestock by a vet chosen by you.

This is part of the SFI offer in 2022 and sits alongside the environmental standards. You do not need to have an SFI standards agreement to be eligible to apply for the annual health and welfare review funding.

Read more information about the annual health and welfare review.

Published 30 March 2022
Last updated 2 September 2022 +show all updates
  1. Updated the Applying for an agreement section for further clarification on BPS eligible farmers now being able to apply directly in the Rural Payments service on eligible land in CS/ES agreements that's outside a common.

  2. Updated guidance on how to apply for SFI. Farmers applying for SFI on land outside a common, including land in Cou

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