Farmers have been left “high, dry and desperate” after the Sustainable Farming Incentive window closed after six hours last week.
The NFU has warned Labour MPs at the party conference that there is a divide between the “haves” and “have nots” in the scheme.
Last week, the SFI second-window budget was “exhausted” in less than six hours, despite warnings from the NFU and other farming bodies that the £253m available would not be enough.
“Farmers charged with producing the nation’s food, delivering for nature and building the resilience of their businesses have been left high, dry and desperate,” said NFU president Tom Bradshaw.
“Farmers want to deliver for the environment and embrace more sustainable farming, but the budget did not match that ambition,” he added. “We now have SFI ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’, based purely on the speed of pressing a button.
“We cannot go on like this.”
The Country Land and Business Association had also warned there was “insufficient budget allocated to enable farmers to continue delivering for the environment”.
“This has been a scramble for thousands of farmers desperately trying not to be left behind and we urge Defra to provide clear guidance to farmers who – despite their best efforts – will be unlucky and fail to secure an SFI26 agreement,” said CLA deputy president Joe Evans.
“Farmers will receive almost a third of a billion pounds each year for three years under new SFI26 agreements. That’s nearly a billion pounds invested in resilient farming,” said farming minister Stephen Morgan in response to criticism.
“Previously a quarter of funding headed to just 4% of farms making claims,” he added. “That’s why this government developed a fairer system to reach more farmers by capping applications at £100,000 and ensured small farms and those new to environmental land management schemes were prioritised.”
The NFU has called for the government to commit to opening the next iteration of SFI in early 2027, allowing agreements to begin from 1 April.
Bradshaw added: “2026 has been the hardest summer for British farming in a generation. No sector has escaped. Confidence is fragile, cashflow is at crisis point and investment has suffered.”
Arable farmer Claire Donakin, who did not secure funding, told The Grocer it was “absolutely insane”.
“We need to have long-term security,” she said. “How can you possibly commit everything your family has to whether you were fast enough to press go and whether you were smart enough to employ the right kind of consultant to write it for you?”
She added: “It needs to be easy. It needs to be secure. It needs to be multi-governmental. It needs to give some agility to the industry.”
Meanwhile, Phil Rayner, MD of Glebe Farm, said it was “possibly one of the biggest crimes or at least hypocrisies going on”.
He added that it “seems to cut away all the promises about carbon neutral, sustainability and farm support”, warning “the whole white paper about the future of agriculture has had the wheels come off already”.
He also criticised the amount available as only £220m for “the main meal of the farm support”.
Morgan recognised that many would be “deeply disappointed” not to get on the scheme “particularly given the challenges the sector has faced this year”.
He added: “I have heard those concerns and am determined to work closely with farmers as we learn lessons from this year and shape SFI27, including exploring alternatives to a first-come, first-served application process.”
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