Origin Rural is a consultancy with the rural sector at its heart.
Through first-hand experience, we provide owners and managers of land and property with high quality support from the ground up.
Confessions
DEFRA’s recent announcement that the SFI pot is empty is one of several domestic policy blows that has left the rural sector punch drunk.
The reform of Inheritance Tax relief has wider reaching implications than short term agri-environment budgets, but nonetheless compounds the sense of oppression. Business owners and farmers represented as broad-shouldered benefactors who should now pay their own way, and carry a heavier burden is divisive and writ large in policy.
Understandably, farming groups have made very legitimate representation to policy makers as to the impact of changes to direct funding, and capital taxation on assets, often yielding fractional returns. Despite rhetoric signalling support for a robust food-supply chain and a sustainable rural sector, the die is cast; land management is in reform. What’s left of the agri-environment budget will be directed towards self-sufficiency measures, and investment in the market place, without long-term support from the tax-payer.
Recent geo-political events and the rapid escalation of European security may well change the direction of travel. A ‘bolt from the blue’ is never far away, but it is nonetheless important to deal with the facts. Control the controllables.
More than ever, it critical to identify where businesses are positioned and what drives the current approach; be that food production, environmental enhancement, succession, lifestyle; or a hybrid. The reason it’s important is the pending land use framework and associated 25-year farming roadmap; currently under consultation. The land use framework draws from the growing tussle for land use between development (renewable energy, housing infrastructure etc), food production, environmental protection and natural capital; and could represent the dominant principles influencing all rural businesses.
The consultation paves a clear trajectory towards transformative change for land use. Nearly 20% of land cover in the UK has been identified for change in differing degrees to ‘make space’ for nature (‘30 by 30’ most notably), water, emissions reduction, delivering new infrastructure, housing and maintaining food production. Vitally, there is a step change in the role for land-use change in delivery of net zero by 2050, as underpinned by the Environment Act and climate targets. The recent Climate Change Committee (CCC) review of progress in decarbonisation of the economy makes for uncomfortable reading, both in terms of credible plans and real advances. Unsurprisingly, firmer recommendations are forthcoming to accelerate net zero, as mapped out in the recently published ‘Seventh Carbon Budget’. Agricultural land as a carbon sink, via tree planting and peatland restoration, combined with electric tractors, energy crops and substantially reduced livestock numbers are all central to the pathway, with land-use transformation taking an increasing share of responsibility into 2050.
Budgeting as a theoretical exercise has its limitations, and these are very apparent in the CCC’s recommendations for land-use change. Fundamentally, the changes proposed rely on investment in the sector, both from internal and external sources, economic prosperity, and changes in consumer habits. Unhelpfully, the framework pits farming against all other categories for which ‘space’ is needed. Recognising the interaction between economically viable rural businesses, investment in nature restoration, robust communities, and low carbon technology is vital to gain traction. A rising tide raises all boats.
The policy levers are being pulled to force change. Whether businesses subscribe to direct public funds through schemes is only part of the picture. Planning policy, on-farm compliance, incentivisation of new markets and taxation will all lean into the framework. The next couple of years will be kinetic, and standing still is not an option.
Highlights
🚜 An update on the Sustainable Farming Incentive - The government has committed £5 billion over 2 years to sustainable farming and nature recovery
💵 Grants for farmers and land managers: programme extended to March 2026. - Farmers and land managers in the Cotswolds can now apply for funding from the Farming in Protected Landscapes (FiPL) programme until March 2026.
🏠The Planning and Infrastructure Bill 2025 - The Planning and Infrastructure Bill, first announced in the King’s speech in July 2024, was introduced into Parliament on 11 March 2025 for its first reading in the House of Commons. The Bill is part of wider planning reforms taking place this year.
🐝 Land Use Consultation- The Government is launching a national conversation about land use, to minimise trade-offs and optimise the use of our land.
⚡EPCs and MEES: a farmhouse-shaped hole in the law - The law on how the Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) and Minimum Energy Efficiency Standards (MEES) regulations apply to farmhouses is complicated and unclear, but it is an important issue for rural landlords.
🦫 Bever fever hits Purbeck - Two pairs of beavers have been released into the wild at Little Sea, Studland, under licence from the government. It was the first licence of its kind to be issued in England – all previous releases have been for releases into enclosures.
Update from the farm
Spring is springing, and the dry conditions have certainly come as welcome relief at the end of winter. For the first time, we have two fields of failed grass seed establishment; both of which fell victim to October’s deluge of rain. So the spring cultivation regime needs to get underway sooner rather than later. This is typically the time my ‘education’ re-commences as I go on secondment with a John Deere (and my cultivation specialist, pictured below) at foot. Annoyingly the minimum wage doesn’t increase until April, but the therapeutic striping up and down with a plough or power harrow probably means I should be paying for the meditative benefit. Perhaps the next wellness diversification offer, to follow a cold plunge and sauna?
On more serious matters, the recent NFU farm business confidence survey results are stark; having reached “historically low levels, bypassing the record lows set last year.” The challenges of commodity margins, costs of finance, policy instability and succession stress are having compound effects. Having been involved in the establishment of a new farmer cluster group over the last 12-months, the prospect of greater collaboration in our industry offers real opportunity. Whether considering small scale joint ventures to share machinery and labour, or brokering landscape scale environmental services across a river catchment; leveraging scale and commercial opportunity is vital to the sustainability of healthy rural businesses.
Best wishes,
Chris
—
Chris Jones
Owner / Origin Rural
originrural.co.uk
Work with us
Origin Rural is a consultancy with the rural sector at its heart.
Through first-hand experience, our independent professional services provide owners and managers of land and property with high quality support from the ground up.
Origin Rural is a trading name of Origin Rural Ltd. Company No. 13591790