AHL2 - Winter Bird Food

[Humble Village Farmer]

Yes there can be problems with sugar beet but these options are simply adding to the problem many times over. Two thousand years of husbandry and field hygiene down the pan at the stroke of a bureaucrats pen. They know best of course. Won’t be told. We will see. Probably affect the blue rinse rural retiree Tory grass roots hardest. We will see how keen they are on all this nonsense once ratty has moved in.

You are talking as if there is no existing rat problem. Your cousin is a pest controller, what does he reckon?

 

[Hindsight]

Yes there can be problems with sugar beet but these options are simply adding to the problem many times over. Two thousand years of husbandry and field hygiene down the pan at the stroke of a bureaucrats pen. They know best of course. Won’t be told. We will see. Probably affect the blue rinse rural retiree Tory grass roots hardest. We will see how keen they are on all this nonsense once ratty has moved in.

I take it then DrW you haven't included AHL2 in your SFI application and you are possibly not a devotee of game shooting?

 

[alomy75]

Farming isn't a level playing field though. Some have veg land and some have windswept rocky mountain.

If whole farms going into SFI wasn't the intention, then the scheme should have had limits built into it. Failing to do that is negligence.

It wasn’t the intention; hence there are now limits! It was just designed at a time when wheat was £300/t and the payout had to be handsome to get takers. Now wheat isn’t up there and the sfi prices have been set (high) and everyone has jumped on the bandwagon as it’s suddenly more profitable than farming. Fairly straightforward really.

 

[fieldfarmer]

It wasn’t the intention; hence there are now limits! It was just designed at a time when wheat was £300/t and the payout had to be handsome to get takers. Now wheat isn’t up there and the sfi prices have been set (high) and everyone has jumped on the bandwagon as it’s suddenly more profitable than farming. Fairly straightforward really.

I thought they increased the payments this year ( after Christmas) to encourage more takers, if so wheat was certainly not £300 per ton then.

 

[alomy75]

I thought they increased the payments this year ( after Christmas) to encourage more takers, if so wheat was certainly not £300 per ton then.

That announcement would have taken months to finalise. Why else would they have done it?!

 

[Chris W]

IMO Defra need to be very careful about how they handle this.

Personally if the “loopholes” didn’t exist I wouldn’t have signed up and they wouldn’t have had any of the “environmental benefits” i will be delivering over the next 3yrs.

And if they make so many changes they we cant trust that we can continue in the same vein in 3yrs time I might even send the 1st payment back and tell them to rip up my agreement

 

[fieldfarmer]

That announcement would have taken months to finalise. Why else would they have done it?!

Because numbers of people signing up was so low, they had to generate interest this spring or the whole sfi thing would have looked a failure.

 

[Steevo]

IMO Defra need to be very careful about how they handle this.

Personally if the “loopholes” didn’t exist I wouldn’t have signed up and they wouldn’t have had any of the “environmental benefits” i will be delivering over the next 3yrs.

And if they make so many changes they we cant trust that we can continue in the same vein in 3yrs time I might even send the 1st payment back and tell them to rip up my agreement

I think it’s a pretty clear conclusion to draw that anyone who has put more than 25% in won’t be able to do the same at the end of their three year agreement.

I fully agree with all of the points you have made though - it’s like Goldilocks and the three bears, first not enough, then too much, etc.

 

[farmerm]

Because the money offered for this SFI option is the same as the CS option. They can’t allow it to be more profitable in SFI than CS.
Also it would favour the milder parts of England.

CS will eventually roll into SFI, tough luck for the last couple of years with existing CS agreements but then many should be able to switch their CS into SFI. Defra are on track for significant underspending of the budget as it it!

 

[Pigless]

I’ve warned before and I’ll warn again that these bird plots will cause an explosion in rural rat numbers and these will cause considerable problems for rural people.
But as usual all I hear from the big claimants and DEFRA is an eff you attitude which pretty much sums up where champagne ecologists priorities lie. Rural dwellers, productive farmers included are an obstacle to their dream of general rewilding and their obsession with increasing wildlife numbers vastly above what they are now at human expense in terms of taxation and inconvenience and even loss of productive livelihoods.
This will come back to bite the government.
Nobody need say they weren’t warned.

I think beavers will turn out to be a bigger problem, and we won't be allowed to touch them.
Just like a bunch of NE personnel!

 

[farmerm]

I think it’s a pretty clear conclusion to draw that anyone who has put more than 25% in won’t be able to do the same at the end of their three year agreement.

I fully agree with all of the points you have made though - it’s like Goldilocks and the three bears, first not enough, then too much, etc.

Some of us don’t intend for much more than 25% in SFI longer term but this autumn created some exceptional situations..

 

[Huno]

IMO Defra need to be very careful about how they handle this.

Personally if the “loopholes” didn’t exist I wouldn’t have signed up and they wouldn’t have had any of the “environmental benefits” i will be delivering over the next 3yrs.

And if they make so many changes they we cant trust that we can continue in the same vein in 3yrs time I might even send the 1st payment back and tell them to rip up my agreement

Good plan! But you wont because you are theirs now...

 

[Huno]

CS will eventually roll into SFI, tough luck for the last couple of years with existing CS agreements but then many should be able to switch their CS into SFI. Defra are on track for significant underspending of the budget as it it!

Tough luck indeed but you know what i think of DEATHRA....

 

[alomy75]

Because numbers of people signing up was so low, they had to generate interest this spring or the whole sfi thing would have looked a failure.

I think we have got lost in translation somewhere…! I completely agree! Sign up was low because it was more profitable to farm as before (high prices etc) so sfi increased. Then farming (prices and the weather impact) looked less profitable so people signed up to sfi and it became (or looked to become) oversubscribed

 

[Adeptandy]

Heard only 17% of farms have signed so far

 

[Huno]

I think we have got lost in translation somewhere…! I completely agree! Sign up was low because it was more profitable to farm as before (high prices etc) so sfi increased. Then farming (prices and the weather impact) looked less profitable so people signed up to sfi and it became (or looked to become) oversubscribed

It is under subcribed currently... no suprises there when business people who farm (farmers) make 5 to 10yr plans.. not reactive 3 yr knee jerk reactions...

 

[Princess Pooper]

I think we have got lost in translation somewhere…! I completely agree! Sign up was low because it was more profitable to farm as before (high prices etc) so sfi increased. Then farming (prices and the weather impact) looked less profitable so people signed up to sfi and it became (or looked to become) oversubscribed

...plus the reductions in BPS really beginning to hit home for many.

 

[Princess Pooper]

Heard only 17% of farms have signed so far

A lot (ourselves included) are waiting for the next version and will apply this summer (in our case, hopefully quitting our CS agreement).

 

[alomy75]

It is under subcribed currently... no suprises there when business people who farm (farmers) make 5 to 10yr plans.. not reactive 3 yr knee jerk reactions...

Probably is; but something frightened them. Of the applicants I imagine too many were taking too much out of production. As for 5-10yr plans; I can’t imagine many will be doing that now after the last 5 years we’ve had-covid, brexit, putin, weather….who could have planned for any of that.

 

[DrWazzock]

I take it then DrW you haven't included AHL2 in your SFI application and you are possibly not a devotee of game shooting?

No, I’ve no game strips and I’m not going to apply for more than an acre of bird seed if any at all. This option hasn’t been thought through as we have aiready seen. An acre or so here and there away from dwellings would be acceptable but even 5 ha in a block is too much in my opinion. My own agronomist has terriers and this year they took 400 rats out of game strips. Mild winters and a massive increase in bird feed option area and now talk of leaving cereal headlands unharvested and we are heading for a rodent vermin epidemic. It’s just not sensible. It’s naive and plain stupid in my view. Corporate land management sharks feasting on the naivety of the DEFRA chinless wonders neither of whom could give one for rural dwellers or productive farmers caught up in the middle of the mess they are creating.