Last week, the Secretary of State, Therese Coffey, attended the CLA conference in which she spoke about the future of farming.

Yet again, the new Environmental Land Management schemes were described as being essential to achieve targets to halt nature’s decline and Net Zero – something that is universally acknowledged – and many will find it exasperating that six years since the EU referendum, Defra is yet to say how that will be achieved. Time is running out.

Alongside the National Trust and RSPB, The Wildlife Trusts recently published this blog explaining ongoing concerns about the new farm schemes and the watering down of ambition – an example being the ditching of the Local Nature Recovery scheme.

For decades, farming has been one of the leading causes of nature declines, with one in nine species in the UK now threatened with extinction. The new Environmental Land Management (ELM) schemes in England are critical to helping nature recover and preventing river pollution – but these schemes have been beset by delay and uncertainty.

The Secretary of State confirmed the UK Government’s commitment for the agricultural transition to help tackle the nature and climate crises, but time is short to meet the Government’s targets. Any further delays in these farming schemes will make the task even harder.

It’s vital that we build farmers’ resilience to climate and economic shocks and to enable food security in both the short and long term, and there is bullet-proof evidence that integrating nature into farming systems is vital for food production.

Environmental Land Management schemes must be far more ambitious than previous schemes, which have been unable to stop wildlife losses. If Defra ditches its much-vaunted local nature recovery element of the scheme, it must ensure the revamped Countryside Stewardship dramatically accelerates nature restoration at speed, while rewarding farmers for doing the good stuff at scale.