The recently launched Habitat Wales Scheme featured in many conversations at the Wales Real Food and Farming Conference this year. Andrew Tuddenham, who is Head of Policy for Soil Association Cymru, one of WRFFC23’s sponsors, explores this troubled scheme and its outlook.
Wales has led the UK in terms of both the proportion of certified organic land area and the proportion of its farm support budget allocated for rural development, the funding source for agri-environment schemes. Although the amount of land area and funds are modest in absolute terms, they show a policy commitment to nature-friendly farming that Welsh Government can be proud of. The Sustainable Farming Scheme, due to launch in 2025, was heralded by government as the new approach required to address the environmental damage and farming sector’s economic frailty caused by the Common Agricultural Policy, itself a policy response to a dysfunctional food system.
But with all Glastir contracts now ending on 31st December 2023 and the hurriedly introduced Habitat Wales Scheme for 2024 causing widespread alarm due to jaw-dropping reductions in payment rates and inaccurate mapping, are we about to see the loss of the benefits of decades of investment in whole-farm sustainable land management?
In what is now becoming a widely reported story, farmers receiving support for nature-friendly and low carbon farming practices through Glastir contracts now face cuts in support payments of some 60-95% within the Habitat Wales Scheme. For some this leaves the off-wintering of hill stock or the management of hay meadows financially unviable. Many organic farmers have indicated that they will need to turn to more intensive practices to maintain their income. There is widespread alarm that the scheme will cause serious economic and environmental damage in Wales, setting back the implementation of the Sustainable Farming Scheme from the outset.
Whilst farms that continuously operate high-input high-output systems often experience less profit or are unable to break even financially, low-input, high-nature farming systems take time to establish and need support along the way. Support payments secure the public benefits that these farming systems deliver in terms of carbon-rich landscapes, flourishing nature, natural flood management and more – an approach that Welsh Government has moved towards through the introduction of the Agriculture (Wales) Act 2023 .
The scope and budget of the Habitat Wales Scheme has clearly been constrained by cuts to the rural affairs budget, due to a £900 million shortfall in Welsh Government’s overall budget for 2023. The scheme looks to be responding to this by spreading a reduced budget for habitat payments as thinly as possible.
The Welsh Organic Forum has warned that the Habitat Wales Scheme’s lack of reward for whole-farm organic management could precipitate a mass exodus of organic farmers. Whilst the WRFFC was underway, the Rural Affairs Minister, Lesley Griffiths, was answering questions at NFU Cymru’s Conference in Llandrindod Wells. In response to pressure from Haydn Evans, chair of the Welsh Organic Forum, the Minister pledged that a small budget for organic farm support would be available. She went on to confirm this in Senedd Plenary on 8th November. We can only hope that this offers a viable option for as many organic producers as possible.
Of course, some farmers previously unable to access Glastir may find new opportunities for support through the scheme. But only 1,600 Expressions of Interest – 40% of which were from farmers not in Glastir contracts – had been submitted as the application window was nearing its end, against a total of 16,500 eligible farm holdings. This means that around two thirds of farms currently in Glastir contracts will be without support next year.
The widespread dismay caused by the Habitat Wales Scheme and its low level of uptake does not bode well for the Sustainable Farming Scheme. Will Welsh Government conclude that there is little demand for the sort of habitat management activities that the SFS proposes to support within the Optional layer, opting to keep the SFS budget firmly reserved for the Universal layer? Other government departments will also be eyeing up any underspend in the Rural Affairs budget in 2024, potentially leaving the SFS with less when it launches in 2025.
If new schemes cast aside those farms that have long delivered agri-environment management and adjusted their farm systems accordingly, government is likely to find itself further away from achieving its legal targets for net zero and future legal targets for nature (as per COP15 commitments). Farming unions, organic control bodies and NGOs have also recently asked the Senedd to investigate the Habitat Wales Scheme to ensure the Sustainable Farming Scheme does not repeat the same mistakes.
The detail of Welsh Government’s new support for organic is expected within weeks. The Welsh Organic Forum has been asking Welsh Government to offer scheme support payments for certified organic management actions across all landcovers on farm – habitat, ‘land managed as habitat’ (a Habitat Wales Scheme category) and all other farmed areas. This delivers additional direct benefit for the habitats, and sympathetic benefits from the organic management of non-habitat land at scale. Organic management actions would secure benefit for nature across the whole farm.
Media interest in the Habitat Wales Scheme is growing, but the story can unhelpfully resemble ‘farmers demand more subsidy’. ‘Subsidy’ doesn’t tell the full story. As agricultural policy moves into the era of ‘public money for public goods’, it’s time to focus more on the benefits that nature-friendly farm support secures for nature and people.
And the message coming from the conference this year must be heard – Welsh Government is losing the confidence of the many pioneering farmers who’ve been managing their habitats, soil, water, and carbon through Glastir contracts, just at a time when government needs them to support the Sustainable Farming Scheme. All this is just at the time when the climate and nature crises that the Sustainable Farming Scheme proposes to tackle have worsened.
Picture: Jane Ricketts Hein
CGFFfC 2022 WRFFC 