Environmental Land Management (ELM) in the UK: A New Era for Agriculture and Environment

The UK government is undertaking a significant reform of agricultural policy and spending in England, transitioning from the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) to the Environmental Land Management (ELM) schemes. This shift aims to phase out subsidies based on land ownership and tenure, and instead, pay farmers and land managers to provide environmental goods and services alongside food production.

Aims of the Agricultural Transition

The agricultural transition aims to grow and maintain a resilient, productive agriculture sector while achieving ambitious targets for the environment and climate. The government recognises the need for farmers and land managers to improve the natural environment alongside food production, with environmental goods and services playing a key role in all farm businesses.

The government plans to work with farmers and land managers to deliver significant elements of its statutory environment and climate targets. An Environmental Improvement Plan, to be published in January 2023, will provide more detail on these goals.

Improving Services for Farmers and Land Managers

The government is reforming its approach to farm regulation to make it clearer, fairer, and more effective. It has increased its Catchment Sensitive Farming offer, which supports farmers to protect water, air, and soil through tailored advice, support, and grants, to cover the whole country. The Environment Agency (EA) has also received increased funding to strengthen its capacity to enforce water quality regulations.

The government is also reforming its approach to controls and penalties to make them clear, fair, and proportionate. It is taking a partnership-based approach, providing advice and giving farmers the opportunity to rectify breaches, while responding strongly and effectively to wilful or negligent behaviour causing harm to the countryside, water supply, and wildlife.

The Three ELM Schemes

As direct payments gradually fall, the government will increase the funding and roll out of the ELM schemes. These include:

1. Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI): This scheme will pay farmers to adopt and maintain sustainable farming practices that protect and enhance the natural environment alongside food production, and also support farm productivity.
2. Countryside Stewardship (CS): This scheme will pay for more targeted actions relating to specific locations, features, and habitats. An extra incentive through CS Plus will encourage land managers to join up across local areas to deliver bigger and better results.
3. Landscape Recovery: This scheme will pay for bespoke, longer-term, larger scale projects to enhance the natural environment.

By 2028, the government plans to increase the number of agreements in these schemes to at least 70,000, covering 70% of farmed land and 70% of all farms.

Outcomes of the ELM Schemes

The ELM schemes aim to deliver significant outcomes for the climate and environment, including creating and restoring a broad range of wildlife-rich habitat, improving water quality, increasing resilience to flooding and drought, creating more new woodlands and treescapes, and reducing carbon emissions.The SFI offers payments to farmers to carry out farming activities in a more environmentally sustainable way. The actions in the scheme are intended to be universal and straightforward for farmers to undertake in the course of their farming activities. Many of the actions will help farmers reduce their costs and improve their efficiency as well as help improve the natural environment and reduce carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions.

The government aims to make the ELM schemes accessible to all farmers and land managers, incentivising them to carry out actions in combinations and at a scale and level of ambition that is more likely to deliver successful, significant results. This is crucial to ensure that the schemes enable farmers to deliver the goods and services needed to achieve the UK's environment and climate targets.