Farming the landscape...

David Morley, H&H Bowe’s environment adviser, outlines details of the latest agri-environment schemes open to farmers.

Over next few years many farms’ existing Environmentally Sensitive Area (ESA) and Countryside Stewardship (CSS) agreements will come to an end. These schemes are now closed and have been replaced by Environmental Stewardship, launched in 2005. Farms wanting to continue to receive agri-environment payments will need to consider how they can use the new scheme to maintain or enhance their income.

There are two tiers to the Environmental Stewardship scheme:

1. Entry Level Scheme (ELS) – designed to deliver simple but effective environmental management

2. Higher Level Scheme (HLS) – designed to deliver significant environmental benefits in high priority areas and situations

The ELS is a points-based scheme. Each farm is given a points target, which is dependant on the area of land being farmed. Points are gained by undertaking particular environmental options and if the points target is hit, acceptance into the scheme is guaranteed.

For those farms coming out of ESA and CSS agreements, meeting the points target is normally straightforward, as the demands of the ELS are significantly lower than previous schemes. For example, most livestock-based farms can achieve their target through a combination of boundary management, mixed stocking (where both sheep and cattle are kept) and low-input grassland management.

Income from the ELS, however, is typically lower than from the old schemes. The standard payment rate is £30 per hectare, but for farms in Less Favoured Areas, any fields over 15 hectares earn only £8 per hectare. This compares poorly with many payments available in the Lake District and Pennine Dales ESAs (see Table 1). Farms coming out of ESA and CSS agreements, therefore, need to look to the HLS to maintain their income levels.

The structure of the HLS scheme will be familiar to those with existing CSS agreements. The country is broken into “Joint Character Areas”, each having its own environmental targets. Farms choose particular options to try to meet these targets in return for area-based payments. The scheme is used to “cherry pick” those environmental features that are considered especially valuable and effectively pay to protect them. Unlike ELS and the ESA scheme, the HLS is competitive – each application has to prove its worth before being accepted.

For many CSS holders, there are similar options available to the previous scheme and it is normally possible to gain enough points to enter the scheme. One advantage of the HLS over CSS is that payment rates are the same for maintenance as for restoration, so farmers are no longer penalised for already having the environmental feature in question.

The HLS will be less familiar to those coming out of ESA agreements. One major difference is that exact management prescriptions are negotiated on an individual farm basis, rather than being the same for all farms. Experience to date suggests it is much more difficult for ex-ESA farms to enter the HLS. Typical ESA prescriptions do not necessarily develop those things being targeted by the new scheme, making it hard to get enough points. This means applications must be more creative in order to align themselves with the local targets e.g. creating arable corners for farmland birds on improved grassland within the Cumbria High Fells JCA.

Farms coming to the end of their ESA or CSS agreements will need to consider the new schemes seriously, if they are to maintain their current income levels. And in the future, environmental schemes are likely to become even more important in obtaining public support for farming.

Table 1: Comparison of payment rates between ESA and the new schemes

NB: this is a rough comparison of maximum payments that may be given for a particular sort of land; it is unlikely that management prescriptions would be identical

* If accepted into the scheme

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