Cutting nature-friendly farming budget would be 'devastating'

CUTTING the budget for nature-friendly farming would be “devastating” for wildlife and rural communities, the Government has been warned.

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Environmentalists warned that cutting the spend on the post-Brexit farming schemes, which pay farmers and landowners to deliver public goods such as hedgerows, wildflower habitat and clean water, would “remove all hope” of the Government meeting targets to reverse nature's declines.

And farmers, who have already been hit by changes to inheritance tax and the abrupt closure of this year's sustainable farming incentive (SFI), the biggest strand of the environmental land management scheme (Elms), said cuts would be “disastrous”.

The warnings come in the face of reports that the Environment Department (Defra's) nature-friendly farming budget, which has replaced EU agricultural subsidies based mostly on the amount of land farmed, will be cut in the forthcoming spending review.