Recommendation 15

An important test of whether the Department’s approach will be successful is the pilot for SFI, for which applications opened in July 2021. The SFI pilot will test how farmers respond to the scheme’s design and systems, the approach to farm inspections and compliance, and ease of use of current systems and technical guidance.40 The Department told us that 938 farmers had applied to join the pilot, in line with its target of around 1,000 participants out of 218,000 farm holdings,41 and that this included good representation of different types, sizes and location of farms.42 It also told us that these participation rates were a sign that the SFI offer was attractive to small farmers and tenant farmers.43 The Department wrote to us after our evidence session to explain that, of those taking part in the pilot, 22% were tenant farmers. This is in line with the proportion of the farming sector they represent at 26%.44 However the data also showed that 30% (283) of pilot participants were on farms under 50 hectares.45 In comparison, published data show that more than double this (61%) of English farm businesses as a whole are below 50 hectares.46 The Department committed to providing us with a breakdown of the pilot participants, including the different geographies represented, but its letter did not include this analysis so we do not yet know how representative the pilot is in terms of farm location.47