England’s core farming budget has lost the equivalent of £511mn to inflation since 2021, according to analysis by the Conservative Environment Network (CEN) published days before the 28 October Budget.
Had the budget kept pace with inflation it would now stand above £2.8bn, CEN said, compared with the roughly £2.3bn ministers have allocated. Its analysis puts the core Farming and Countryside Programme at £2.32bn this year, falling in cash terms to £2.27bn next year and £2.25bn in 2028-29, BritBrief reported. The programme funds the Sustainable Farming Incentive and other environmental land management schemes that now provide a large share of many farms’ support payments.
The figure for this year is in line with Defra’s own Farming Annual Report, which put the total farm budget at £2.322bn for 2025/26, Farmers Guardian reported in September.
“The core farming and nature budget has been steadily squeezed by inflation since 2021,” said Dillon Smith, CEN’s head of policy, describing the shortfall as “unacceptable given the challenges farmers and nature face”, the Express reported.
Defra says it invests more than £2.7bn a year in farming and nature, a total that includes about £450mn a year for separate nature schemes. The department has committed £11.8bn to sustainable farming and food production over this Parliament and recently added £65mn to help farmers with drought pressures. A Defra spokesperson said the government was “backing our hard-working farmers with the largest nature-friendly budget in history”.
The analysis lands days after Defra published its Farming Sector Environmental Objectives, which aim to double the share of wildlife-friendly farms by 2030 but came with no additional funding.
For rural communities, a farming budget that is flat or falling in cash terms means less real support per farm at a time when businesses are being asked to deliver more environmental outcomes, with knock-on effects for farm incomes and the rural economies that depend on them.
Featured image: Photo: TCExplorer, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
