UK farmers protest food policy

Farmers across the United Kingdom have been protesting a cluster of food and land policies they say rewards taking land out of production and leaves farm businesses with less certainty. (fwi.co.uk) One flashpoint was England’s Sustainable Farming Incentive, a post-Brexit payment scheme that pays for actions such as managing hedgerows, reducing insecticide use and creating wildlife habitat. On 11 March 2025, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs stopped taking new applications, saying the budget had been fully allocated and that the scheme already had more than 37,000 live agreements. (defrafarming.blog.gov.uk) The protests widened on 24 March 2025, when Farmers To Action said more than 1,000 tractors and farmers joined demonstrations at more than 20 locations. Farmers in that campaign cited the closure of the Sustainable Farming Incentive to new applicants, rising costs and tax changes alongside broader fears about food supply. (fwi.co.uk) A second dispute centered on England’s Land Use Framework, which the government put out for consultation on 31 January 2025 and published in final form in March 2026. The framework says England has enough land to maintain domestic food production while also restoring nature, building homes and expanding clean energy. (gov.uk, gov.uk) Farm groups focused on one number in that debate: the National Farmers’ Union said the consultation proposed a 9% reduction in agricultural land use and warned that any framework must keep food production “at its heart.” The union said it opposed shifting that much land away from agriculture, even while backing more “multi-functional” land that produces food and environmental benefits at the same time. (nfuonline.com) The government’s position is that these payments are not designed to pay farmers to quit food production altogether. Defra said the Sustainable Farming Incentive was delivering “sustainable food production and nature’s recovery,” and the final Land Use Framework says the country can meet environmental and development goals without cutting domestic food output. (defrafarming.blog.gov.uk, gov.uk) The anger from farmers was sharpened by how the subsidy changes were handled. The National Farmers’ Union said Defra shut the Sustainable Farming Incentive without warning on 11 March 2025, and parliamentary answers from ministers repeated that the closure happened because the current budget had been allocated in full. (nfuonline.com, questions-statements.parliament.uk) That matters for farm planning because these schemes replaced European Union-era direct payments after Brexit, and many businesses had built budgets around the new system. A 2025 House of Commons Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee report said confidence in Environmental Land Management Schemes had been damaged by the sudden closure of the 2024 Sustainable Farming Incentive offer. (publications.parliament.uk) The government has since tried to answer the profitability question with a separate review led by Baroness Minette Batters, published on 18 December 2025. Defra said that review was meant to feed into a food strategy, a farming roadmap and longer-term decisions on land use in England. (gov.uk) The protests are likely to keep circling the same point: farmers want proof that schemes for wildlife, trees and carbon will not leave them producing less food with less income and less notice. The government says the same policies can deliver both food security and environmental goals; farm unions say the balance has not been shown yet. (gov.uk, nfuonline.com)