Rural Practice - Whole Farm Approach Update

The Whole Farm Approach has now been in operation for over 12 months and has been taken up by numerous farmers.  The system, set up by DEFRA, has been developed in conjunction with various Government Departments including the Environment Agency, The Rural Payments Agency and Natural England.

The system is purely electronic and provides an area for farmers to log information about their businesses.  The system is then tailored to provide advice and guidance specific to that business.  The aim is to provide pre-on farm inspection information to relevant organisations in order to cut the need for inspections.  In addition the various inspecting bodies can log the information collected from inspections for use by other bodies, again to reduce the number of actual inspections.

So far there have been two updates to the system this year; the June Agricultural survey and the ability to register the waste licence exemptions.  The planned 2007 updates include:

It is anticipated that in the longer term Single Payment Scheme applications will be made through this system as well as Environmental Stewardship applications.  It is planned that the system will grow and develop over the coming years.

For any further information please contact Andrew Wright at our Milton Keynes office.