CHANGES TO ELMS
As reported in last week’s Enews, the announcement at the Oxford Farming Conference included an increase to payment rates for the existing Sustainable Farming Incentive and Countryside Stewardship schemes and details of 50 new actions available from summer 2024. These include new SFI actions for Moorland and Agro-Forestry and an SFI payment for maintaining drystone walls of £27 per 100m. Note the payment increases don’t apply to older Higher Level Stewardship agreements. The announcement can be viewed here, with further detail in this Annex.
This week, Defra published a post outlining the actions relevant to the uplands - click here for more details. They also emailed farmers with information about the changes to payment rates:
We understand there is unlikely to be more information about the new actions before the summer when Defra publishes the guidance notes.
Defra is organising a webinar on 26th January about the changes and you can find out more and book here.