Spending review 2025: Cutting agricultural budget could be 'catastrophic' for nature, farmers and charities warn

Spending review 2025: Cutting agricultural budget could be 'catastrophic' for nature, farmers and charities warn

The National Trust and RSPB have joined forces with farmers to warn the government that cutting the agricultural budget could be "catastrophic" for nature and rural businesses.

Growers Warn Funding Cuts Will Drive Them Back to Intensive Methods

Farmers across England are raising the alarm ahead of Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s spending review today, warning that the withdrawal of post‑Brexit environmental subsidies will force a return to intensive farming.In a letter to DEFRA, more than a dozen leading rural organisations—including the CLA, National Trust and RSPB—describe the impact of possible cuts as “catastrophic” for both nature and farming livelihoods. A recent CLA poll of 460 membe…

Farmers warn R&D crunch risks blue sky work

Farmers are urging an Albanese government in the search of better R&D outcomes not to tinker with their 30-year-old model of public-private co-investment in agricultural innovation and instead address more fundamental issues. The sector’s peak body says the model continues to deliver but faces new threats from falling government investment in agricultural R&D and a retreat by universities and the CSIRO from the work. In a submission to the Strat…

Spending review 2025: Cutting agricultural budget could be 'catastroph

The National Trust and RSPB have joined forces with farmers to warn the government that cutting the agricultural budget could be “catastrophic” for nature and rural businesses. In a letter to food security and rural affairs minister Daniel Zeichner, exclusively seen by Sky News, a dozen of the biggest rural industry organisations say they are “deeply concerned” about rumoured cuts that will be made to the agricultural budget in Wednesday’s spend…