A Rural Payments Agency question and answer event on The Farming Forum has laid bare what English farmers most want settled before the second Sustainable Farming Incentive application window opens on 22 September: whether the schemes, and the money behind them, will still be there when their current agreements run out. The agency answered some of it. A larger share of what farmers asked was ruled out of scope.
By TFF News | 15 September 2026 | Business
The conversation ran from 6 July to 2 September 2026 and drew 125 visible contributions, 5,187 views and 120 reactions, an average of 0.96 reactions per contribution. It peaked on the opening day with 30 contributions. These figures describe one conversation on The Farming Forum. They are not a representative survey of the sector.
The Farming Forum opened the conversation to collect questions for RPA Chief Executive Oliver Munn and Customer Director Julian Mahony, who responded in a filmed interview and, from mid August, in written replies posted by the official RPA and Defra Farming accounts. That format matters to the trade: it is a rare direct record of what farm businesses put to the head of the agency that pays them, and of which questions the agency will actually take.
Continuity was the question underneath everything
Scheme continuity carried 20 contributions, and the anxiety was concrete rather than abstract. One contributor asked simply: “Will SFI be available to me when my current scheme ends in May 2027?” Another put the trade implication bluntly: “Or would farmers be better off ignoring it altogether rather than commit to something so unreliable?”
The trust deficit was stated in terms any adviser or supplier will recognise: “Many farmers have been badly burnt by changes in the past and have learned not to trust, or rely on payments. This isn’t helpful for business planning.” For agreements expiring after February 2027, the official replies pointed to the Farming Roadmap 2050 and said detailed arrangements had not yet been announced.
Fears of a scramble when Window 2 opens
Access to the September window drew 14 contributions. With Window 1 restricted and cash limited, several contributors expected a rush: “Will it be a free for all like Glastonbury tickets.” The same contributor reported agents already warning clients they could not guarantee an application would land before the cash limit was spent.
Another raised the role of professional advisers directly: “Bigger pockets will get served by professionals first”, and asked the RPA to publish what share of applications and funding go through agents. The agency later replied that it has not published that data. A livestock contributor set out the arithmetic worry: “sfi 26 window 1 only has a budget of 60m which will run out before all eligible claimant’s get on the scheme”.
Payment rates under fire
Rates and budget carried 14 contributions. An arable contributor said the offer fails on its own terms: “Why are the payment rates so poor that they cannot even compensate, let alone encourage SFI?” A livestock contributor challenged the reduction for herbal leys, calling them “Possibly one of the most beneficial options available to livestock farmers there is.” Another asked “Whats the plan when the budget runs out and half the farmers in England still haven’t got an SFI scheme?” One contributor questioned whether land in schemes should still be expected to produce: “Should there not be some obligation if receiving what were funds for agricultural support to at least produce something?” These are opinions from the conversation, not verified market positions, but they signal where scheme income now sits in farm planning.
Administration wears patience thin
RPA service and administration drew 16 contributions. On inspections: “A report received weeks after the event is not good enough”, one contributor argued, comparing the agency unfavourably with Environmental Health practice. On mapping: “Our farm appears to have one most years and the areas of some fields appear to change every year !” And on transitions between schemes, one contributor reported: “My Cs closed 18months ago and they still trying to get my sfi 24 to work.” These accounts are individual experiences as described by the contributors and have not been independently verified.
What the agency would, and would not, answer
The most striking pattern is what happened when the answers arrived. Contributions that met the out-of-scope wall, or official replies deploying it, numbered 27. The standard reply ran: “any questions relating to policy decisions, finance / budget, future schemes or potential future changes are matters for Defra and fall outside the scope of this forum”. Questions on why rates were cut, whether funding would be fair rather than first come first served, and the logic of scheme design were all directed away from the agency that administers them.
Where questions fell inside the agency’s remit, farmers did get usable answers. On whether options must be kept beyond an agreement’s end date: “The obligations on the actions end with the agreement expiry date, so this action can be removed from the date the agreement expires.” On combining schemes, the RPA confirmed SFI26 actions can be stacked with existing agreements where there is available area and no conflict. And on re-entering the same actions on the same parcels from an expiring SFI23 agreement, the Defra Farming account was direct: “Unfortunately, the answer is ‘no’ as this would in effect be dual funding”.
The official position, checked
The figures contributors argued over are broadly confirmed by Defra’s own publications. The Defra Farming blog of 30 June 2026 confirms Window 1 opened with £60 million of a £240 million SFI26 budget, matching the figure cited in the conversation. The follow-up of 29 August reports Window 1 closed with around 6,500 applications, 69 per cent from farms of up to 50 hectares, a mean agreement value of just under £10,000, and confirms Window 2 is expected to open on 22 September with an additional £50 million, taking the scheme budget to £290 million this financial year. It also commits to an SFI27 scheme in 2027, a partial answer to the continuity questions that dominated the conversation, though it arrived after most of them were asked.
The question the trade is left with
The event answered process questions and dodged policy ones, which is exactly the split farmers complained about. What it could not answer is the question that shapes buying decisions this autumn: whether farm businesses will treat scheme income as dependable enough to plan around. If the 22 September window clears quickly and SFI27 lands as promised, some of that trust may rebuild. If eligible farms are left outside a spent budget again, the scepticism recorded here will harden, and every business that sells seed, advice or services on the back of scheme options will feel it. The next fortnight will tell.
Read the source conversation and analysis
Read the full conversation on The Farming Forum here.
Download the full conversation analysis as a PDF slide deck: Rural Payments Agency Q&A conversation analysis (PDF).
This conversation had been viewed 5,768 times on The Farming Forum when counted on 1 October 2026. Want your brand in the room when farmers talk business? Book advertising with Agri Web Media.