Farmers protest wildflower payments

English farmers have spent two years arguing over a subsidy system that can pay more for wildflower strips and bird cover than for some break crops. The fight is over the Sustainable Farming Incentive, the post-Brexit scheme that rewards “public goods” such as pollinator habitat, cleaner water and healthier soils. (gov.uk) Under one current action, farmers in England can receive £739 a hectare a year for a pollen-and-nectar flower mix. Defra’s guidance says the strips are meant to feed bumble bees, butterflies and hoverflies and can also support natural pest predators near cropped land. (gov.uk) That payment landed in a farm economy hit by volatile yields and wet harvests. Farmers Weekly reported in September 2023 that some arable growers were considering more wildflowers and winter bird food because the income looked steadier than crops such as linseed, spring beans or oilseed rape. (fwi.co.uk) One Berkshire farmer told the magazine he “never thought” he would be growing flowers rather than food, but said wheat, barley and oilseed rape had become too risky in repeated bad seasons. Another Essex farmer said he was looking at flower-rich margins on marginal land while keeping better land in production. (fwi.co.uk) The argument sharpened on March 11, 2025, when the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs shut the Sustainable Farming Incentive to new applications with immediate effect, saying the year’s budget had been fully allocated. The department said 50,000 farm businesses were already in Environmental Land Management schemes and the previous design had been uncapped despite a finite budget. (standard.co.uk) The National Farmers’ Union said the closure came with no warning and called it “another shattering blow” to English farms. The union said the stop-start rollout had undermined confidence in the agricultural transition that replaced European Union area-based subsidies after Brexit. (nfuonline.com) Food security sits underneath the row. Defra’s 2024 food security report said the United Kingdom’s production-to-supply ratio was 62% for all food in 2023 and 75% for foods that can be produced domestically, figures farm groups cite when they argue that productive land should not be pushed out of crops without a clear plan. (gov.uk) Defra’s case is that the scheme was never designed to pay farmers to stop farming. The department says the aim is to support environmental benefits “as they produce food,” and its 2026 redesign cuts the offer from 102 actions to 71 after ministers said some options did too little for food production or had low uptake. (defrafarming.blog.gov.uk) The 2026 relaunch also adds tighter budget controls after last year’s shutdown. Defra said on February 24, 2026, that the new offer would reopen with 71 actions and published new payment rates, while farm advisers said applications would open in stages rather than all at once. (defrafarming.blog.gov.uk) The dispute is less about whether wildflowers help wildlife than about which acres should carry them and who gets paid to make that choice. As the revised scheme rolls out in 2026, the test for ministers is whether they can keep habitat payments on farms without convincing growers that flowers now pay better than food. (gov.uk)