The Basic Payment Scheme (BPS), which provides rural grants to support farmers, is to be replaced with the Environmental Land Management Scheme (ELMS) by 2024; a total of £1.8bn a year will be transferred to Environmental Payments.
What is ELMS?
Environmental Land Management Scheme or ELMS for short, is the foundation of the government’s new agricultural policy; it is based on ‘public money for public goods’ where it will provide a dynamic way of achieving the goals of the 25 Year Environment Plan, to reach net-zero emissions by 2050.
The Government wants to encourage wide participation, looking to increase the participation rate in Environmental Land Management from the current 30%, to more than 70% of farmers by the end of the transition.
The Scheme is positioned to allow farmers to have more choice and control, a greater focus on outcomes and the main practices of farming, and a fairer, more supportive approach to compliance.
What does the ELMS Scheme mean for farmers?
The Environmental Land Management Scheme will primarily benefit farmers who make environmentally positive changes to their businesses. Productivity grants are also being introduced to help farmers invest in these changes, including purchasing new equipment and technology.
Farmers will benefit from the scheme when they deliver the following public goods:
- Clean air
- Clean and plentiful water
- Improving animal health and welfare
- Protection from environmental hazards
- Beauty, heritage and engagement with the environment
- Reduction of and adaption to climate change
- Land management – planting woods and restoring peatland.
The Government is currently running trials, and a national pilot, before they fully roll out the scheme in2024. You can find out more about the trials, here.
An advisory booklet will be launched with steps to take, towards the end date for direct payments. There will also be additional grants made available for farmers managing livestock slurry more carefully.
If you’d like to stay up to date with the movement on ELMS, sign up to Defra email alerts, here. Alternatively, you can read the Government’s “Path to Sustainable Farming” document, here.
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