The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) wants 42% of farm businesses in England to provide year-round food and shelter for wildlife by 2030, double the 21% recorded in July 2025.
The goal is one of 14 Farming Sector Environmental Objectives published by Defra on 22 October, which set out how much land management change is needed from farmers to meet England’s legally binding environmental targets. Agriculture covers around 70% of England’s land, so the objectives sketch the scale of change expected across much of the countryside over the next decade and beyond.
To count towards the farm wildlife objective, a farm must carry out at least one action from each of three groups – summer food, nesting and shelter, and winter food – and those actions must together cover at least 7% of the farm’s agricultural area. Qualifying options include pollen and nectar mixes, flower-rich margins and overwintered stubbles. Progress will be measured through live Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI), Countryside Stewardship and capital grant agreements.
Other objectives include creating or restoring at least 48,200 km of managed hedgerow by 2037, rising to 72,500 km by 2050, according to Defra’s hedgerow objective. Up to 60% of farmland – about 5.4 million hectares – is expected to be under sustainable soil management by 2030, and agricultural nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment pollution is to fall by 32%, 39% and 37% respectively by 2038 against a 2018 baseline, FarmingUK reported.
The objectives place no new legal duties on farmers and come with no additional funding. Defra states that the uptake trajectories in the document “should not be assumed to reflect future scheme availability”, leaving open how farmers will be paid to deliver them once current agreements end.
The publication follows the Farming Roadmap 2050 published in June and arrives as SFI remains the main vehicle for paying farmers for environmental work.
For rural communities, the targets signal that the next generation of farm support will be judged against measurable environmental outcomes, with significant implications for farm incomes, land use and the rural landscape.
Featured image: Photo: JThomas, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
