§ The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Margaret Beckett)The Policy Commission on the Future of Farming and Food recommended that an entry-level agri-environment scheme should be made available to as many farms in England as possible. The Government accepted this recommendation and announced in the Sustainable Farming and Food Strategy in December 2002 that, subject to a successful pilot, the Entry Level Scheme would be made available to farmers across England from 2005.
27WSI am pleased to inform the House that the pilot for this new scheme begins today. Guidance Booklets which give full details of the scheme design, including the environmental management options that farmers will implement under the scheme, the application process and application forms are now available. Farmers in the four pilot areas will be able to apply for the new scheme from now until 30 May 2003.
All farmers with land in the four pilot areas have been invited to launch meetings in the week beginning 3 March, at which they will be able to collect copies of these booklets. Defra staff and representatives from our partner organisations will be on hand at the meetings to answer farmers' questions and provide further information. These meetings will be followed by workshops in the four pilot areas, which will provide further practical help for farmers.
The design of the pilot for the Entry Level Scheme, including the location of the four pilot areas, has been developed in close consultation with key partner organisations through regular meetings of an Entry Level Scheme Working Group.
The pilot areas were chosen carefully, according to a range of objective criteria, to be representative of a variety of English farm types and landscapes. There are approximately 200 farms in each of the pilot areas. The areas chosen to pilot the new scheme are:
Area Nearby towns Pilot area broadly Representative of: North East Barnard Castle(Co.Durham) Upland farming South West Tiverton (Devon) Grassland farming South East Mortimer (Berkshire, nr Reading) Mixed farming East Midlands Market Deeping Arable farming and (Lincolnshire) cropping Maps showing the precise boundaries of the pilot areas have been placed in the Defra library in Nobel House.
The basic features of the Entry Level Scheme Pilot will be as follows:
Farmers taking part in the Pilot Scheme will have to identify important environmental features and areas on their farm. They will also have to make a commitment to carry out simple, yet effective, environmental management activities, which they will select themselves from a wide-ranging list of options. Examples of options available include wildlife-friendly hedge management, buffer strips around key features on the farm, the maintenance of stone walls and managing low input grassland.Each option will be worth a certain number of points, related to the cost to the farmer of implementing that option. If the farmer achieves a target number of points for their farm they will be guaranteed entry to the scheme and payment. The target number of points will be based on farm size. Farmers will have to get 30 points per hectare, except for LFA land in parcels of 15 ha or more where the threshold will be 15 points per hectare.28WSThere will be a flat rate payment of £30 per hectare over the whole holding, paid annually. However, for LFA land in parcels of 15 ha or more, farmers will receive £15 per hectare. The lower rates reflect the fact that this land, which is normally extensively grazed, is generally managed less intensively, farmers could not be expected to implement such a wide range of measures, or at the same level of intensity, as in lowland farming situations.The scheme will be open to all farmers who farm land within the pilot area boundaries.Agreements will be for 5 years.A key aim of the scheme is high take-up, as the environmental management activities available will be most effective if they are applied across a wide area. To facilitate high uptake, the scheme has been designed to be simple to administer for both the farmer and Government. We hope that farmers participating in the pilot will be able to understand and implement the entry level scheme themselves, without the need for specialist advice on a one-to-one basis.
The pilot will be closely monitored and evaluated for the next two years. The evaluation will assess the application of the environmental management measures at the farm level, including their potential to deliver the expected environmental benefits. The accessibility and popularity of the scheme, and an analysis of the factors affecting uptake, will also be considered.
The experience gained from the pilots will enable us to adapt and improve the scheme design before aiming to roll out the Entry Level Scheme across England in 2005.