I was feeling the pressure when I woke up on the morning of the Lakeland fair at Kendal auction. We have applied to be part of the new Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) scheme, including its “native breeds at risk” supplement. This means that 80% of our livestock must be native pedigrees, so we have spent thousands of pounds on pedigree belted galloway cows and pedigree sheep, in the hope that it will help with our application. We’re now trying to sell our unregistered/non-pedigree sheep, and hope to cover the cost of what we’ve already spent.
As the sun rose, I lay in bed looking out across the Howgill Fells worrying about a shortage of buyers – due to outbreaks of bluetongue among cattle in the east of England, farmers there are restricted in how far they can travel. Then there was my concern about our SFI status. For weeks the rural payments system has said “checking application”.
