{"id":350909,"date":"2026-01-04T01:33:14","date_gmt":"2026-01-04T01:33:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/350909\/"},"modified":"2026-01-04T01:33:14","modified_gmt":"2026-01-04T01:33:14","slug":"protest-hit-post-brexit-sustainable-farming-scheme-goes-live","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/350909\/","title":{"rendered":"Protest-hit post-Brexit sustainable farming scheme goes live"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rural affairs secretary Huw Irranca-Davies called it “a landmark moment for Wales” and said an early test would be how many farmers sign up.<\/p>\n

New Year 2026 is “really significant” for Welsh agriculture, said Abi Reader, NFU Cymru’s deputy president, who owns a dairy farm in Wenvoe, Vale of Glamorgan.<\/p>\n

“This is a once in a generation change to farm support payments and there’s a lot of expectation riding on this,” she said.<\/p>\n

For decades farms had received more than \u00a3300m a year in EU subsidies, shared out largely based on how much land they had.<\/p>\n

Getting a replacement plan in place after Brexit – known as the Sustainable Farming Scheme (SFS) – had been “an absolutely enormous rollercoaster”, Ms Reader said.<\/p>\n

Unions had branded earlier versions of the government’s plans as “unworkable” and they contributed to a wave of protests in 2024, including the largest ever seen outside the Senedd.<\/p>\n

After further negotiations, final details were unveiled this summer<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Farms joining the SFS will have to commit to 12 so-called universal actions in exchange for their entry-level payment.<\/p>\n

These range from maintaining hedgerows and reducing pesticide use to attending online courses on sustainable farming practices.<\/p>\n

Additional funding would be available for more ambitious environmental work and farms working together.<\/p>\n

“I think we’re largely pleased with the framework now, but there are still a number of tweaks [to be made] and we still need a budget that will reflect inflation and really deliver for farms and for the countryside,” Ms Reader said.<\/p>\n

Farmers now have to prepare to apply for the new scheme by 15 May.<\/p>\n

Alternatively they could stick to their old subsidies as they are phased out, but see a 40% cut to their payments this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rural affairs secretary Huw Irranca-Davies called it “a landmark moment for Wales” and said an early test would…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":350910,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[1397,90,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-350909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=350909"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350909\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/350910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=350909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=350909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=350909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}