Rural Payments Agency
What you can get paid to do under the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI)
SFI pays farmers to adopt and maintain sustainable farming practices that can protect and improve the environment.
You can apply for a 3-year SFI agreement to do environmental land management actions to help you manage your land in a more sustainable way.
You can also get paid for:
- a vet to visit your farm annually to review the health and welfare of your livestock and give you advice about improvements you could make, which will help you increase farm productivity and resilience
- environmental land management actions under Countryside Stewardship (CS) which pays for more targeted actions relating to specific locations, features and habitats CS is being improved, instead of developing a new Local Nature Recovery scheme
- environmental land management actions under Landscape Recovery which pays for bespoke, longer-term, larger scale projects to enhance the natural environment
Read the Environmental Land Management (ELM) update we published in January 2023, to find out about the land-based environmental land management actions well pay for under SFI and CS by the end of 2024.
SFI does not currently include any payments for capital items to help you complete the actions. However, you can access one-off payments to buy equipment or other capital items from existing offers, such as Countryside Stewardship capital grants and the Farming Investment Fund.
Find out more about what other funding is available for farmers, land managers and foresters in the guidance about funding for farmers and land managers.
SFI is run by the Rural Payments Agency (RPA) on behalf of Defra.
SFI agreements for environmental land management actions
This SFI scheme information replaces the information about the SFI 2023 offer that was in the ELM update we published in January 2023. Weve made improvements to the SFI 2023 offer since we published that information.
How weve improved SFI for 2023
Weve learned from the SFI pilot and early rollout of SFI that farmers want as much flexibility as possible, so they can choose:
- what combination of standalone pick and mix actions they want to do
- which area of land to do each action on
This has helped us to improve the SFI 2023 offer to give farmers this flexibility. Farmers will also be able to do more SFI actions and other environmental land management options, such as Countryside Stewardship (CS), on either the same area of land or a different area in the same land parcel.
Weve also:
- brought forward many actions into the SFI23 offer which were previously scheduled for 2024
- decided to apply the new SFI management payment to all land-based SFI actions, including the action for moorland (MOR1)
- updated the payment rate for the SFI action for low input grassland in the Severely Disadvantaged Area (SDA), so the payment rates are the same in the upland and lowland areas
Summary of the SFI actions you can apply for in the SFI 2023 offer
The tables below summarise the standalone pick and mix SFI actions which will be available in the SFI 2023 offer.
Were introducing new actions for soils and moorland which replace the SFI standards for soils and moorland we launched in June 2022 (the SFI 2022 standards).
Three actions from the SFI 2022 soils standards will not be available in the SFI 2023 offer (add organic matter, single species winter cover and minimise bare ground). This is because they only work when theyre grouped together with other actions, and done on a required percentage area of land, as was the case in the SFI soils standards but they do not work as standalone pick and mix actions. This page explains further down what the SFI 2023 offer means for existing SFI 2022 standards agreements.
Read the details of the SFI actions for more information about each action.
Actions for soils
| Code | SFI action | Annual payment |
|---|---|---|
| SAM1 | Assess soil, test soil organic matter and produce a soil management plan | 5.80 per hectare and an additional payment of 95 per agreement |
| SAM2 | Multi-species winter cover crops | 129 per hectare |
| SAM3 | Herbal leys | 382 per hectare |
Actions for moorland
| Code | SFI action | Annual payment |
|---|---|---|
| MOR1 | Assess moorland and produce a written record | 10.30 per hectare and an additional payment of 265 per agreement |
Actions for hedgerows
| Code | SFI action | Annual payment |
|---|---|---|
| HRW1 | Assess and record hedgerow condition | 3 per 100 metres one side |
| HRW2 | Manage hedgerows | 10 per 100 metres one side |
| HRW3 | Maintain or establish hedgerow trees | 10 per 100 metres both sides |
Actions for integrated pest management
| Code | SFI action | Annual payment |
|---|---|---|
| IPM1 | A
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