Lizzy Elgie, Farm & Environmental Advisor at StephensonsRural, reflects on a difficult summer for farmers and land managers and looks at the support available into autumn, including environmental scheme adjustments, SFI26 funding and measures to improve on-farm water resilience.

Summer 2026 has brought farmers and land managers a poor yielding and record breaking early finished harvest, rapid spending on SFI 26 window 1 and capital grant budgets and new challenges to safeguard the land from extreme temperatures and fires. However, could there be some much-needed support for British farming as we look into autumn?

Reflecting on Summer 2026

The harvest of 2026 has certainly been a challenge. The extreme dry weather over spring and summer for a second year has taken its toll with crops bearing poor yields and with increased input costs of fertilisers and fuel over the past 12 months this has left farmers questioning crop viability. Not only this but due to the extreme weather we have also seen a devastating increase in the number of harvest-related fires across the Yorkshire region. This has shown the strong and supporting community we have among Yorkshire farmers and land managers.

On top of the intense harvest period farmers and land managers have also had to be prepared with SFI 26 window 1 that opened on 30 June and Capital Grants that opened on 30 July. Both of these windows have seen very intense spending within the first couple of days of the schemes being open with Capital Grants having a spend of over 75% of the £225 million budget within 48 hours of opening. This has highlighted the demand for these schemes and the importance of being prepared before the windows open to ensure applications can be submitted.

Looking ahead - the package of support

Environmental Scheme Adjustments

On Saturday 15 August  DEFRA announced that a ‘package of support’ would be offered to farmers following the extreme dry weather.

Not only has the dry weather had a devastating impact on harvest yields it has also meant that actions included in many Environmental Land Management schemes (ELMs) such as SFI and Countryside Stewardship have become almost impossible to carry out in line with the management prescriptions for farmers to work towards.

In order to support the following temporary adjustments have been made:

• Removing restrictions so cutting and grazing land can continue
• Allowing farmers to make firebreaks on land to protect from wildfires
• Giving more time to plant and establish actions where dry conditions have made planting seed mixes impossible

As of 15 August, all counties in England met the criteria of being declared drought or prolonged dry weather, so therefore would qualify for these adjustments.

If you want to find out more about how this may affect actions in your environmental schemes, follow the online guidance here.

SFI 26 Window 2

It was also announced that £50 million more would be added to the budget for SFI 26 Window 2 taking it from £180 million for the window to £230 million.

Reflecting on previous scheme windows although this additional funding is very welcome with the large number of Countryside Stewardship and SFI 23 agreements coming to an end there is also a huge demand for this scheme. As anyone with a scheme ending in February 2027 or before can apply when the window opens, planning these schemes ready to submit is going to be essential. We are still awaiting the official date in September when the scheme will open so booking in a meeting to discuss with the team is advisable.

Water Management

Autumn is also expected to see the return of the Water Management grant with a £15 million budget to support the building of on-farm reservoirs. This could be used to increase resilience on individual farms to drought.

In addition, meetings are due to be held between ministers to review the planning procedures to building on-farm reservoirs with the vision of this becoming easier to access and is a much needed step to review the support for infrastructure on our farms.

If you would like to discuss environmental scheme adjustments, SFI 26 applications or are interested in water management and building resilience please contact Lizzy Elgie or Chris Muir.