5 key actions for nature and the SFS

Fersiwn Gymraeg ar gael yma

The decision to delay the Sustainable Farming Scheme has come as a huge disappointment given the urgent need to respond to the Nature and Climate Emergency.  However, we recognise that if the Scheme is to help farmers across Wales to produce food sustainably, tackle climate change and restore nature it must be both popular and effective. It’s now vital Welsh Government uses this time to work closely with the rural sector to develop a Scheme that will truly enable Welsh farmers to respond to a range of interlinked challenges that impact us all.  

To ensure the Scheme supports farmers to look after nature we have identified the following five key actions we believe Welsh Government should undertake between now and the start of the Scheme in 2026: 

1. Fully develop all the Universal and Optional actions and payments, including for land and habitat management, so that farmers can plan. Government should also secure a realistic budget to deliver the Scheme, which our work shows is about £500 million annually – which is significantly more than the existing budget.
   
   
2. Ensure that farmers already doing good work for nature are adequately supported to continue to do so while they wait for the scheme to start. Many of these farmers would have been in agri-environment schemes and the payments they received were often essential in ensuring they could produce food while also managing their land for nature.
   
   
3. Work with farmers to develop effective and tailored management plans for their Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs), which are some of our most important places for nature. These plans should then be implemented from the start of the Scheme. Where existing SSSI payments are already being made, and are achieving the required outcomes, they should be maintained.
   
   
4. Use the intervening time to test and pilot how to secure landscape-scale management g., for threatened species like Curlew. What we learn from this approach can be used to inform the design and implementation of the Scheme’s Collaborative layer.
   
   
5. Develop effective advice and guidance to support farmers to deliver all the Scheme’s objectives. This includes establishing a network of demonstration farms across Wales representing a diverse range of farming systems.

Ensuring farmers have the right scheme for nature is vital for all of us, including Welsh Government if it is to meet its 2030 biodiversity commitments. Nature is critical in maintaining the ecosystem we depend on, including for healthy soils, the air we breathe and the water we drink.  Nature can help tackle climate change e.g., by storing atmospheric carbon in peatlands and help farming become more resilient, including to extreme weather events like droughts, heatwaves and floods.

In the last century farmers rose to the challenge of producing more food. If farmers are to respond to the huge challenges of the 21^st century and produce food sustainably, tackle climate change and restore nature, it’s essential we use this time to ensure they have the right scheme for the job, which rewards them fairly for this vital work.