Recommendation 27

ELM and other agricultural policies are expected to contribute to government’s environmental objectives, such as species abundance and the 25-Year Environment Plan. However, the RSPB highlighted that there is no overarching vision for agriculture in England or for how ELM will contribute to these wider objectives.73 The recently published net-zero strategy highlighted ELM as a key driver of net-zero,74 but the National Farmers’ Union told us that it had not yet seen this reflected in the development of the scheme. It suggested that the ambition may be too great and questioned whether the ELM budget was sufficient to deliver on all of the environmental objectives attributed to it.75 The Confederation of Forest Industries agreed that there was a lack of clarity about how ELM fits in with other schemes and with Government commitments around net zero and tree-planting targets.76 The expected impact of the scheme on the farming sector