Author Archives: Paul Behrens and Simon Oldridge

Farmers hung out to dry while fossil fuels cash in—more bad news for climate and nature

The Government’s outdated climate and nature targets, coupled with a lack of joined-up decision-making, have delivered yet another disastrous policy blunder. Last week, the Government announced a pause in payments to farmers under the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI).

SFI is one of the key Environmental Land Management (ELM) schemes designed to support farmers in working in harmony with nature—to restore ecosystems, lock up carbon, cut pollution in our rivers, and help to protect communities from downstream flooding. Liberal Democrat spokesperson for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Tim Farron MP, rightly said that the closure of the SFI was a “betrayal” that will “outrage everyone who cares for our environment”.

This reckless decision strikes a blow to the very work needed to stabilise our environment for a liveable and prosperous future. It also betrays hardworking farmers who, despite their crucial role in ensuring food security and environmental sustainability, struggle to make ends meet in an unfair food industry. Most farming household income is well below the national average, contrary to the image portrayed by wealthy hobbyists like Jeremy Clarkson. In horticulture—whose products we need more of for a healthy diet and planet —average incomes are even lower.

This abrupt pause to the SFI puts vital nature-friendly farming at risk and adds further financial strain to farmers’ wafer-thin margins.

A failure of joined-up government

The Government’s approach in tackling the climate and nature crisis, which Liberal Democrats MPs have been challenging, undermines support for a just transition to an environmentally friendly future.

On one hand, DEFRA is pulling the rug out from under farmers striving to adopt sustainable practices, who will have to wait “a year without support” as Sarah Dyke MP correctly points out. On the other, the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero is pouring tens of billions of public funding into the oil industry, using the fig leaf of unproven, costly carbon capture technology to justify a new wave of gas power stations and polluting blue hydrogen plants.

Labour was given the chance to fix this systemic failure in January when Liberal Democrat MP, Roz Savage, proposed the Climate and Nature Bill. The Bill offered a joined-up approach to tackling the climate and nature crisis that would lock the UK’s international commitments into domestic law.