'Easier to get Glastonbury tickets than farm fund'

A farmer missed out on £75,000 of government funding from a green scheme because he was travelling to receive an award for eco-friendly practices.

Online applications for the £233m Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) funding for England closed in under six hours.

Tim Smith, 40, a third generation farmer from East Coker, near Yeovil, said he started his application on his phone while travelling to Sussex but by the time he got to his hotel the scheme had shut. He said he was now considering putting 24 hectares of land set aside for wildflowers back to arable production.

The government said farmers had responded "in force" to the scheme and there would be further funding opportunities for 2027.

The SFI is a post-Brexit scheme which replaced EU subsidies with payments to landowners for environmentally-friendly land management.

Smith was travelling to receive a national award for measures to protect water quality on his farm when the SFI window opened.

"I took my computer with me, which unfortunately isn't a laptop," he said.

"It's quite a big computer but I managed to get it in the car.

"As soon as I got to the hotel I set the computer up and it was shut."

He said the scheme would have been worth £25,000 a year to him for the next three years.

"It's been easier to get Glastonbury tickets than to get on to this scheme which should be available to all of us because everyone wants to do their bit - and everyone wants that that bit of surety," he said.

Smith already has an SFI which expires next February.

He farms 350 beef cattle and 400 acres of arable land, of which 24 hectares is herbal leys paid for by the SFI.

"It's full of biodiversity, full of birds, full of wildlife, but fundamentally - if I'm not being paid for them - they're going to have to go back into production again," Smith said.

Rachel Gilmour, MP for Tiverton and Minehead, said many farmers in her constituency had been disadvantaged in applying to the SFI by unreliable broadband and phone signal on Exmoor.

She said she had written to the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to express her "profound concern" about the "entirely foreseeable" oversubscription of the scheme.

Gilmour said it had left smaller farmers "deeply frustrated, demoralised and disillusioned" and the handling of this SFI round had "further undermined confidence in Government support for the sector".

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said it would provide further information on future opportunities for funding applications in 2027 "soon".

A Defra spokesperson said: "This year we ensured small farms and those new to SFI were prioritised - with an exclusive first window in the summer.

"In anticipation of high demand in the second window, ministers decided to allocate an additional £20m to the fund, on top the £50m announced by the prime minister in August, so that we could fund as many agreements as possible."

Farming Minister Stephen Morgan said the SFI had been designed to be simpler to apply for and that farmers had "responded in force".

Follow BBC Somerset on Facebook and X. Send your story ideas to us on email or via WhatsApp on 0800 313 4630.