The October Budget contained limited measures specifically focused on agriculture, despite the Government's wider emphasis on farming and food security. Further changes to inheritance tax had not been widely expected; attention is instead likely to remain on the overall level of support funding, which continues to be set at pre-Brexit levels.

In 2019, as the UK prepared to leave the EU, Michael Gove set out an ambitious vision for agriculture. He described a "revolution" in support, centred on net zero and major changes to land management to deliver better outcomes for nature. The NFU had also pledged to reach net zero by 2040, a decade ahead of the Government's 2050 target.

 Even then, questions remained about how these ambitions would work in an industry built on tight margins, where the tools for measuring and reducing on-farm carbon were still developing.

 The events of the past six years have sharpened those questions. Covid exposed the fragility of supply chains when supermarket shelves emptied. Since then, inflation has driven up farmers' production costs and food prices, while global instability has pushed food security higher up the political agenda.

 Yet food production and food security were largely absent from the original vision for post-Brexit support in England. The transition away from the Basic Payment Scheme was relatively rapid, while the Environmental Land Management schemes, including the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI), continued to shape the new system.

 Ministers have repeatedly said the farming budget is being maintained. But a cash-terms freeze is a real-terms cut. Between 2019 and 2026, the budget's value has fallen by 33%, using the Bank of England inflation checker. That helps explain the pressure on SFI: Defra has restricted application sizes and sought to support smaller applicants, but there is simply not enough funding to meet demand.

 The scheme's early history offered a warning. Initial uptake was weak, prompting changes to requirements and increases in payments for some actions and the number of those options to get funded was increased. Driven by this, participation then rose until SFI was suspended to new entrants.

 Defra says 48,000 SFI agreements are now in place. Given Defra's own figures for England identify 92,800 farm businesses in 2025, that suggests only around half of farmers are directly involved in the scheme. That is a marked departure from the near-universal reach of the former Single Farm Payment. With the budget exhausted and access restricted, the problem looks deeper than one that can be fixed by another round of adjustments. The scheme's design, payment rates and available funding need to be considered together.

 Support matters in a sector exposed to weather, volatile markets and narrow margins. Stronger returns in recent years may have obscured some of the underlying risks, but this year's drought is a reminder of how quickly conditions can change. A reliable support system can help farmers manage that uncertainty.

 In 2026, England has a scheme whose funding has lost a third of its real-terms value since 2019, whose budget is oversubscribed and which reaches only half the country's farmers. At the same time, the same pot is expected to fund wider landscape schemes. A relatively small government budget is being asked to deliver across an increasingly broad range of priorities. The budget is the elephant in the room and will remain so without some radical change.

 So is it time for a more fundamental rethink of SFI? If funding is not increased to cover the offer properly, the scheme is unlikely to deliver benefits across the industry. The challenge is to balance climate and nature goals with the renewed priority of food security—and with the economics of running a farm.

 Farmers are already focused on productivity, efficiency and reducing costs and inputs. Those changes can also help cut emissions. Rather than relying on a complex set of narrowly defined payments, England could consider a broader support framework that gives the industry a clear direction while allowing farms to improve in ways that suit their own individual circumstances.

 Realistically, SFI may limp on; changing the system so late in the process will be difficult. But without adequate funding and a design grounded in the economics of farming, it is unlikely to provide the dependable support or clear direction the industry needs. The lesson is straightforward: support schemes must be shaped with the industry, and their ambitions must match the money available. Otherwise, they risk promising more than they can deliver, and they will continue to alienate an industry whose success is vital to the country's future.