On Wednesday, Farmer’s Guardian leaked information from a meeting Defra had with farming organisations when they provided an update on the review into ELMs.  This suggested that “Local Nature Recovery” might be replaced/renamed as Countryside Stewardship+ and that the SFI standards expected in 2023 might now be subsumed into Stewardship.  This is all still conjecture but we understand that more information will be available in December.  In the meantime, Defra has released an update about ELMs including a recording of Defra Minister, Mark Spense and Janet Hughes being interviewed by the EFRA Select Committee https://defrafarming.blog.gov.uk/2022/11/16/environmental-land-management-schemes-progress-update/.  This is about 15 minutes long but worth a watch if you want to see what those in charge are saying about the review of ELMs.

Keep watching this space……