The Tenant Farmers Association (TFA) has slammed the government's pace of its delivery of the new Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) scheme as 'unacceptable'.
The body said there were 'huge frustrations' amongst tenant farmers in England over the lack of progress in rolling out the post-Brexit scheme.
TFA representatives today (7 September) held meetings with Defra farming minister Mark Spencer and RPA chief executive Paul Caldwell to call for urgent measures to address the concerns.
These include an improvement to help farmers get involved in the SFI scheme and other measures which recognise the severe cash flow crisis affecting many farms.
TFA chief executive, George Dunn said: "For farms already being hit by the impact of inflation in inputs and a downturn in market returns, lack of progress means robust business planning for the medium to long term has become virtually impossible.
"Additionally, Defra's ability to meet its own environmental targets will also be negatively impacted."
According to the TFA's own survey, around 75% of its members said they were planning to enter the SFI, with most saying as soon as it was available.
Defra recently announced that expressions of interest for the SFI 2023 can now be lodged, with claims active from 18 September.
The TFA said that while this was "better news, it leaves some key questions".
"With the Countryside Stewardship application window already extended, we need assurances that there will be sufficient capacity within the RPA to deal with both strands of work alongside its business-as-usual workload,” said Mr Dunn.
“Defra and the RPA must now move at pace to provide a straightforward mechanism to allow significant early uptake of SFI.
"As we have done all along, we will continue to provide robust scrutiny and challenge to Defra and the RPA to ensure they deliver. However, we need honesty now."
The TFA said that if the pace of necessary implementation could not be assured, it would be "massively damaging" to the cash flow of many farm businesses.
In this situation, this year’s Basic Payment Scheme reduction should be reversed and further planned reductions put on hold, the body suggested.
