Agriculture Bill 2018

The Government published the Agriculture Bill, which ‘sets out how farmers and land managers will in future be paid for “public goods”, on 12 September 2018.

Many of the details restate previous announcements but there are some new elements (which are marked NEW in the summary). There are, as expected, some omissions, the most significant of which is what the overall support budget for farming will be in the future.

The Bill provides the mechanisms by which the Government can change the rules, rather than setting out how new rules will work in practice. It was published alongside a number of other documents that jointly set out the direction of Government policy and how it intends to implement it:

• Agriculture Bill explanatory notes,
• Health and Harmony policy statement,
• Timeline – for when the proposed policies will take effect,
• An analysis of the impacts of removing direct payments,
• An analysis and economic rationales for government intervention.

The Agriculture Bill: Key Points

At a glance

Direct payments will be phased out to zero, over a seven-year agricultural transition period.

Farmers are expected to make themselves more resilient over the transition period.

The ending of direct payments will free up funding to reinvest into the delivery of public goods, some of which will be delivered through a new Environmental Land Management Scheme.

There will also be public support for increasing productivity, improving risk management, R&D, collaboration and raising welfare standards.

Download our complete summary paper