Food security and rural affairs minister Daniel Zeichner has said he “sympathises” with farm businesses hit by Defra’s closure of its Sustainable Farming Incentive, but claims the subsidy scheme has been a “success” overall.
Speaking in his first appearance in front of the Commons environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee this week, Zeichner doubled down on the government’s decision to close the SFI – early and at short notice – on 11 March, due to budgetary constraints.
The closure sparked anger from the farming sector, which said thousands of farms planning to apply were now facing big shortfalls in already stretched budgets. However, Zeichner insisted Defra had no choice but to close the post-CAP subsidy scheme, which had reached its budget.
“I’m very sorry people missed out but the nature of [this type of] scheme is you bid for it and there is no guarantee you get it,” Zeichner told MPs on the committee. “We should be pleased so much land is now farmed in a different way.”
Read more: Farmers outraged as key sustainable farming subsidy closed at short notice
Zeichner rebutted the suggestion the abrupt closure of the scheme would hit food security, citing the most recent government food security index, which showed “we are essentially ok”.
But when asked by Committee chair Alistair Carmichael whether he stood by Defra’s framing of the closure of SFI, due to high take-up, as “a government success story”, Zeichner admitted “of course not, because it wasn’t done in the way we would have liked to have done it”.
More detail on the next round of the SFI will be announced in “late summer”, he added.
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