It feels ironic that the increase in Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) payments is announced on the same day the Met Office reports that the UK’s record breaking annual average temperature of more than 10°C in 2022.

This alarming data seems only to highlight the lack of any coherent policy to address the challenges we face; showing once again that our country’s policymakers seem intent on delivering too little, too late.

Surely the hottest year in record is a concrete indicator that Government must enact wider, more progressive and forward-thinking policies around agriculture and food production in order to arrest climate change and address the decimation of our natural wildlife.

Where are the ‘world leading’, game changing strategies the Government so often herald, when addressing the fundamental challenges in mitigating the climate crisis, and securing a long term, resilient farming sector? Not so far away, our previous European partners are implementing their ambitious Farm to Fork policy and have only recently finalised the new Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism. We are sadly missing the equivalent bold, innovative policies from our own ‘liberated’ Government.

Instead, today’s announcement from Defra while welcome, appears on the face of it a knee-jerk reaction to pacify the sector’s concerns around the new farm payment systems. Even within this now watered-down policy, huge disparities remain for organic farmers in payment rates for equivalent management practises undertaken by non-organic farms. Further evidence of Nero fiddling while Rome burns.

If Defra were genuinely interested in addressing the multiple environmental and economic challenges that our farming industry faces then why are they not actively supporting the development of low input, closed loop, high yielding, resilient and restorative approaches like organic? A recent French Court of Auditors report identified ‘the benefits of organic farming, particularly in terms of health and the environment, and observes that the development of organic farming is the best way to make the agri-environmental transition successful and lead so-called conventional farms towards more environmentally friendly practices.’

While not every farmer may want to shift to organic, it is a growing worldwide movement with globally expanding markets which provides the UK with significant benefits both environmentally and economically.