Farmer lost out by minutes in race for wildlife funding

The barn owls have become one of Richard Peace's favourite sights on the farm.

As dusk falls near the woods edging his land outside Nuneaton in Warwickshire, the birds emerge to hunt over fields he has spent years managing.

This year he wanted to do more to help them thrive.

To encourage the owls, Richard planned to leave some crops unharvested near the woodland where they live.

"Obviously that will bring some of the wildlife out of the woods, like voles and mice, and I was hoping that the barn owls would then thrive even more than they are already," he said.

But leaving part of a crop in the ground comes at a cost.

The government offers support to farmers carrying out environmental work through schemes that pay for so-called public goods, from improving habitats to boosting biodiversity.

For Richard, accessing some of that £310m funding seemed straightforward enough. All he had to do was submit an application.

What he did not realise was that he was entering a race against thousands of other farmers for that limited pot of cash.

"We looked at 8am and it wasn't live. I had things to do so I went to work on the farm," he said.

"Checked again at lunchtime, it was live and I started. We had a few errors but I did get to the end of the form and submitted it.

"I was minutes too late and the scheme had been subscribed. The money pot was exhausted."

Richard is among thousands of farmers who missed out after funding was snapped up within hours.

He believes smaller family farms may have been at a disadvantage.

While some larger businesses could dedicate staff to monitoring the application process, Richard spent the morning carrying out day-to-day work on the farm before returning to complete his submission.

The National Farmers' Union (NFU) had already warned that demand could outstrip the available funding.

Helen Fisher, who farms near Atherstone and is deputy regional chair of the NFU Midlands, said: "The scheme opened and closed in six hours. Nobody had anticipated that level of demand.

"We had been warning Defra there would be high demand and 12,000 farmers just couldn't get their applications in in time."

Richard believes a first-come, first-served system is the wrong way to allocate support.

"It should be available to everybody, those applications should then be evaluated," he said.

"If the scheme is oversubscribed the larger payments should be scaled back so that smaller farmers can get a slice of the larger pot."

Farmers in the Midlands often operate on a smaller scale than elsewhere in England, although regional data showing who ultimately benefited from the scheme is not publicly available.

Stories like Richard's have become increasingly familiar, and ministers have acknowledged concerns about the way applications were handled.

Farming Minister Stephen Morgan said: "I know some farmers who wanted to join SFI26 will be deeply disappointed not to have secured an agreement during Window 2, particularly given the challenges the sector has faced this year.

"I have heard those concerns and am determined to work closely with farmers as we learn lessons from this year and shape SFI27, including exploring alternatives to a first-come, first-served application process."

For Richard, the hope is that by next year the system will be fairer and allow more farmers to access support for projects that benefit wildlife.

If that happens, the barn owls he enjoys watching over his farm may have an even better chance of thriving.

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