Labour cutting farming budget in England by £100m a year, figures shows
Labour is cutting the farming budget in England by £100m a year, spending review figures show,Despite the decrease, the budget has been cautiously welcomed by nature and farming groups, as there were fears the Treasury had wanted to reduce the funding further,Farmers have felt squeezed by the Labour government’s policies over recent months, with mass protests over the introduction of inheritance tax on farms worth more than £1m,Extreme weather and rising input prices have increased financial pressures on the sector, which has meant that a cut to the budget could have serious impacts,Ministers have also indicated that larger farms could be ineligible for the nature-friendly farming fund in future.
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs was recently forced to U-turn on a freeze to new applicants for the fund after the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) threatened legal action.Previous research by the RSPB has found that a £100m a year cut would lead to 239,000 fewer hectares (590,580 acres) of nature-friendly farmland.Defra said the funding paid to farmers under of environment land management schemes (Elms) would “skyrocket” from £800m in 2023-24 to £2bn in 2028-29.However, the NFU has called this “misleading” because after Brexit, farmers were promised that their subsidies would be the same as they were under the EU and were promised a figure of £2.4bn a year.
The Elms programme was devised by the conservatives after Brexit: the goal was that rather than being paid per acre, farmers should be paid for improving nature,While the programme was being put in place,the acreage payments known as basic payments schemes (BPS) were kept, and cut each year as Elms increased,BPS is due to be phased out entirely by 2028,Farmers currently get the £2,4bn a year in the two streams as well as a smaller amount of money in grants for things such as robotics trials.
Going forward, the government has promised an average of £2.3bn a year up to 2028-29 for the farming budget.By the end of the spending period the budget will shrink to £2.25bn, with £2bn allocated for Elms and the rest paid in productivity grants.Sanjay Dhanda, the NFU’s senior economist, has said Defra has been “misleading” in its claims.
He said: “A key pillar of Defra’s budget is the continued investment in Elms, with funding set to rise to £2bn by 2028-29, compared with the £1.8bn earmarked in the autumn 2024 budget.While the government has framed this as a significant uplift from the £800m spent in 2023-24, this comparison is misleading as Elms was not fully operational at that point, and delinked payments [BPS] absorbed a large share of funding.”However, Defra sources pointed out that although the previous government allocated £2.4bn a year for Elms, the Tories in fact underspent it by about £100m a year.
That government had, however, promised that by the end of the spending period, which was cut short by the general election, the full fund was ringfenced and would be allocated to farmers,Tom Bradshaw, the NFU president, said: “While the Defra secretary of state has listened and managed to maintain the overall funding for farming and nature recovery, from what we can see so far, the £100m cut to farming means farmers and growers will need to do more with less,”Mark Spencer, a former farming minister who was in charge of issuing the farming budget, said the amount spent on Elms would have been higher than £2bn at the end of the spending period, under the Tories,Sign up to Down to EarthThe planet's most important stories,Get all the week's environment news - the good, the bad and the essentialafter newsletter promotion“The 2.
4bn was meant for Elms.It was always our intention and emphasis to reduce BPS and pour the money into Elms and for the vast majority of it to go to Elms,” he said.Reacting to the cut, Spencer added: “A part of me is angry, a part of me is just so sad.We made such huge progress and now it is in jeopardy.”Nature groups have credited Steve Reed, the environment secretary, for protecting most of the budget.
Hilary McGrady, the director general of the National Trust, said the chancellor Rachel Reeves had maintained the budget for nature-friendly farming, adding: “Steve Reed deserves credit for securing this budget in challenging financial circumstances.”A Defra spokesperson said: “Contrary to media reports that the farming budget would be slashed by £1.2bn over the next three years, the government is investing a record £5.9bn into nature friendly farming schemes.”
Workers in UK need to embrace AI or risk being left behind, minister says
Workers in the UK should turn their trepidation over AI into “exhilaration” by giving it a try or they risk being left behind by those who have, the technology secretary has said.Peter Kyle called on employees and businesses to “act now” on getting to grips with the tech, with the generational gap in usage needing only two and a half hours of training to bridge.Breakthroughs such as the emergence of ChatGPT have sparked an investment boom in the technology, but also led to forecasts that a host of jobs in sectors ranging from law to financial services will be affected.However, Kyle said: “I think most people are approaching this with trepidation. Once they start [using AI], it turns to exhilaration, because it is a lot more straightforward than people realise, and it is far more rewarding than people expect
Tell us: what questions do you have about the impacts of smartphones on children?
A quarter of three- and four-year-olds in the UK now own a smartphone, but the impact of that is still being understood. From endless scrolling to constant notifications, smartphones expose children not just to their friends and classmates, but to a world of advertising, influencers, and algorithms. But how is all of this shaping how children see themselves, relate to others, and develop emotionally?In a video series on our It’s Complicated Youtube channel, we’re speaking to experts to explore how smartphones might be affecting children’s mental health, attention, self-esteem and relationships. Are social apps making kids more anxious? What happens when children are targeted by ads that shape their sense of identity from a young age? What do we know, and what don’t we yet understand, about growing up in a world where you’re always online?We want to hear from you. What have you always wondered about children and smartphones? Whether you’re a parent, teacher, or just someone curious about the long-term effects, fill out the form below to share your questions
Disney and Universal sue AI image creator Midjourney, alleging copyright infringement
Disney and Universal sued an artificial intelligence company on Wednesday, alleging copyright infringement. In their lawsuit, the entertainment giants called Midjourney’s popular AI-powered image generator a “bottomless pit of plagiarism” for its alleged reproductions of the studios’ best-known characters.The suit, filed in federal court in Los Angeles, claims Midjourney pirated the libraries of the two Hollywood studios, making and distributing without permission “innumerable” copies of their marquee characters such as Darth Vader from Star Wars, Elsa from Frozen, and the Minions from Despicable Me. Midjourney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The suit by Disney and Universal over images and video represents a new frontier in the raging legal wars over the copyright and the creation of generative artificial intelligence
‘They went too far’: Musk says he regrets some of his posts about Trump
Elon Musk has expressed contrition for some of his tweets about Donald Trump last week, in an apparent effort to retreat from an explosive falling out that has threatened to damage the Tesla boss’s business interests.Musk was by far the biggest donor to Trump’s presidential campaign, but tensions between the two erupted into public view last week and rapidly escalated, as the world’s richest man called for the president’s impeachment and mocked his connections to the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in a series of posts.On Wednesday, Musk posted on X, the social network he owns: “I regret some of my posts about President @realDonaldTrump last week. They went too far.”Musk’s public apology came after the tech billionaire privately called Trump on Monday night, the New York Times first reported, citing three people familiar with the matter
Meta to announce $15bn investment in bid to achieve computerised ‘superintelligence’
Meta is to announce a $15bn (£11bn) bid to achieve computerised “superintelligence”, according to multiple reports.The Silicon Valley race to dominate artificial intelligence is speeding up despite the patchy performance of many existing AI systems.Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, is expected to announce the company will buy a 49% stake in Scale AI, a startup led by Alexandr Wang and co-founded by Lucy Guo, in a move described by one Silicon Valley analyst as the action of “a wartime CEO”.Superintelligence is described as a type of AI that can perform better than humans at all tasks. Currently AI cannot reach the same level as humans in all tasks, a state known as artificial general intelligence (AGI)
UK students and staff: tell us your experiences with AI at university
The use of ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence tools are becoming increasingly commonplace in UK higher education. A February survey of 1,000 students showed an “explosive increase” in use of generative AI in particular over the previous 12 months.With this in mind, we’d like to find out more about how AI is affecting students at university.How has AI impacted your studies? Have you used AI tools? Have you been suspected of using AI when you haven’t? What guidance have you been given by universities or tutors about using AI? Do you have any concerns?We’d also like to hear from university teaching staff – what is the impact of AI on students’ work? What are the challenges?You can tell us about your experiences with AI at university using this form.Please share your story if you are 18 or over, anonymously if you wish
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