Ready or not, here I come: Understanding English farmers perceptions of the changes in UK agricultural and environmental policy

Under the new post-Brexit era English agricultural and environmental policies are changing, with a transition away from direct payments to agri-environmental schemes. With a significant proportion of farmers reliant on direct payments for their viability, there is a need to understand farmers awareness of the proposed changes in farm policy, and to assess the extent to which English farmers are adapting their businesses to changes in policy. This research used transcribed qualitative in-depth semi-structured interviews conducted with 34 farmers across England and representative of the main industry sectors. Thematic content analysis using NVivo and attributional information was used to analyse farmer responses. The research found that there existed predominantly negative views about the ELMs and the Sustainable Farming Incentive pilot. Alarmingly over a third of farmers did not know the financial impacts of future policy changes and over a fifth of farmers had undertaken no planning at all, with only a third of farmers planning for reduced support. The results identified that the in-coherence between the ELMs policy and international trade policy was the main source of farmers’ resentment towards the new policy and opportunities to improve the design of future schemes and policy to align with farmers’ goals.