Government’s new Farming Roadmap 2050: What you need to know.
Government recently published their Farming Roadmap – providing a long-term, strategic direction for the sector. The strategy sets out an ambitious vision for a profitable, productive, sustainable and resilient sector, underpinned by a series of actions to support farmers and create the enabling conditions for change.
The strategy marks a positive step forward in recognising the challenges that farmers are currently facing, the importance of the sector to the economy and bringing together a multitude of policy and programmes that touch farming. However, the strategy has sparked some concerns from industry around the lack of committed investment and resources to enable delivery.
The NFU’s president Tom Bradshaw argued that “Intent alone won’t deliver a secure and affordable supply of homegrown food for the nation, nor will it care for 70% of England’s landscape”.
Whilst the strategy has somewhat a sense of being an “interim plan” – with numerous actions focused on setting up new groups, developing more plans and understanding the challenges better – the phased approach perhaps reflects a greater commitment than ever before to work with the farming industry to co-develop policy and programmes that work for farmers.
Key Takeaways
Farming must adapt – and be supported to do so. Throughout the strategy, there is a common theme of “transition”. This cuts across improving the profitability and productivity of farm businesses, alongside building resilience and delivering environmental outcomes. Whilst some of the supporting actions are a targeting of existing interventions (e.g., for the Environment Land Management schemes), others such as planning reforms and creating sector specific Growth Plans present new mechanisms for change.
Expect collaborative models to play a larger role. Co-operatives and mutuals will be encouraged to enable collective purchasing, shared services and co-investment. In relation to public procurement, co-operatives and aggregated farm groups are identified as a vehicle to enable local farmers to meet demand for local public sector organisations. Combined Authorities and Local Authorities could start thinking about how they can support the creation of new co-operatives or farming clusters to ensure local farmers benefit from this change in policy.
Recognition that farmers must be paid a fair price for their produce. Government will bring into force Fair Dealings’ Regulations for each relevant sector to tackle specific issues, as well as a range of other actions – from improved oversight of the grocery supply chain to strengthening origin labelling. Alongside this, the strategy still retains a focus on diversifying farm income streams, indicating that diversification will still be important to support farm profitability and resilience. This reflects a challenging balancing act between ensuring farmers are paid a fair price for their produce, whilst keeping food prices affordable for consumers – all within the context of a globalised market and the power of supermarkets.
Soil health and regenerative agriculture. The strategy outlines a “learning phase” up to 2030, focused on a building a national picture of soil health, improving access to good soil data, and supporting practical, site-specific soil management. This suggests that beyond 2030, there may be more transformation policy and regulation in place to enable the shift to regenerative agriculture practices. Government are also set to publish an Organic Action Plan for England, which will outline how the public and private sector will work together to promote sustainable, long-term sector growth of organic food and farming.
Nature and farming to work hand-in-hand. There is an emphasis on supporting farming models where food production and biodiversity reinforce one another, rather than compete. As much is this is about policy, the strategy also talks about this being a mindset shift. Measures includes incentivising farmers through agri-environment schemes to integrate wildlife friendly practices into productive farmland, such as creating year-round food, shelter and breeding resources for farmland species.
Strengthened focus on water quality. Farmers will be required to take stronger action to reduce water pollution and improve water quality, supported through the strengthening of regulation and launch of a new online Nutrient Management Tool. There will also be a transition to regional water planning and stronger catchment planning, as set out in “A new vision for water”. This will harness local and cross-sectoral insight, including from farmers, to identify where action should be prioritised to tackle water quality, water supply and flooding issues.
Shift from financial incentives for farmers to being part of the regulatory framework. To improve the environmental performance of farming, gradually some actions currently funded through ELM schemes will be moved into the regulatory framework, particularly those that mitigate harms. Linked to this, there is a firm commitment to work closely with farmers, industry and other stakeholders when creating or updating regulation, underpinned by a set of principles that ensure regulation is appropriate and allows time for businesses to effectively plan for change.
Expect greater targeting of some actions in future iterations of SFI/ELMs. The total budget for the ELM schemes will increase to up to £2billion a year by 2029 (compared to £800m in 2023). Alongside the shifting of payment incentives to regulation, Government will increasingly target ELMs measures, as private finance and markets for ecosystems continue to grow. This means that ELMs will transition to focus exclusively on environmental public goods that cannot be delivered through other routes, focusing public funding where it makes the biggest difference.
Climate mitigation and adaptation. Whilst the strategy does not seem to identify new support or funding to support farm businesses to decarbonise and adapt to the impacts of climate change, it lays the foundations for this change. For example, opening a sector-wide national conversation later in 2026 to agree how food and farming can reduce emissions while growing productive, resilient businesses, and publishing a Food and Farming Decarbonisation Plan for England.
Circularity. There is a small nod to the circular economy through priorities around supporting farms to make best use of resources and reduce waste, through advice, technical and financial support.
Move towards a more spatial approach. Using Local Nature Recovery Strategies and other local evidence to target actions where they will have the most impact. For example, using Local Nature Recovery Strategies to prioritise ELMs spend. There is also a commitment to integrate hedgerow data into national spatial mapping to support effective targeting and long-term biodiversity planning.
Data. Data. Data. The strategy recognises the need for better data to support farmers, investors and policy makers to make informed decisions. The strategy sets out a number of actions to improve the quality, accessibility, interoperability and use of data across the following buckets: developing government data infrastructure, Delivering modern, spatial land-use intelligence, Publishing core national datasets for better decision making and setting clear standards for environmental data.
Bringing Defra farming services into one integrated service. Perhaps one of the most transformational actions for farm businesses – Government will create a new service with the ambition to bring together Defra farming services in one place, including livestock records, grants, environmental schemes, compliance information and advice, making it easier for farmers and land managers to manage responsibilities, access support and plan.
You can read the full strategy here.