Environmental Stewardship

What is it?

Environmental Stewardship is a new agri-environment scheme which provides funding to farmers and other land managers in England who deliver effective environmental management on their land.

The scheme is intended to build on the recognised success of the Environmental Sensitive Areas scheme and the countryside Stewardship Scheme. Its primary objectives are to:

• Conserve wildlife (biodiversity)
• Maintain and enhance landscape quality and character
• Protect the historic environment and natural resources
• Promote public access and understanding of the countryside
• Natural resource protection

Within the primary objectives it also has the secondary objectives of:

• Genetic conservation
• Flood management

Environmental stewardship has three elements:

Entry Level Stewardship (ELS)
• Open to all farmers and landowners.
• Simple and effective land management.

Organic Entry Level Stewardship (OELS)
• Organic strand of ELS.
• Open to all farmers not receiving Organic Farming Scheme (OFS) aid.

Higher Level Stewardship (HLS)
• Targeted environmental management.
• Capital work plans.

What are the benefits?

ELS provides a straightforward approach to supporting the good stewardship of the countryside. OELS takes a similar approach, but is geared to organic and organic/conventional mixed farming systems. HLS is designed to build on ELS and OELS to form a comprehensive agreement that achieves a wide-range of environmental benefits across the whole farm. HLS concentrates on the more complex types of management where land managers need advice and support and where agreements will be tailored to local circumstances. ELS and OELS go beyond what will be required under the Single Payment Scheme (SPS) cross compliance conditions. Entering into an Environmental Stewardship agreement will not remove any cross compliance obligations.

For more information check out www.dedra.gov.uk