The Crown Estate has announced a £20 million fund to support its tenant farmers to transition to a new greener 'future farming model'.
The Rural Environment Fund is part of the estate's new measures announced today (21 January) to support the delivery of nature and biodiversity targets.
The £20m fund, increased this year from £10m, will support tenant farmers to transition to a 'future farming model', backed by food production and nature recovery.
As part of it, the Crown Estate, the UK sovereign's public estate, is seeking to repurpose 15% of farmland let on new tenancies to nature recovery by 2030.
Since the fund’s inception three years ago, tenant farmers have undertaken a number of 'no regrets' nature interventions.
These include 300km of new hedgerows and 280-hectares of new woodland across their farms.
But the estate’s new 15-year environmental Farm Business Tenancy (FBT) will create create the ‘guardrails and opportunities’ for farmers to further this ambition.
The Crown Estate says it is also committed to developing visions for nature recovery with graziers with common rights in Wales and Cumbria, by 2030.
Paul Sedgwick, managing director at the estate said: "Food production remains at the core of our farmers’ businesses but the need to balance this with nature recovery is of paramount importance.
“Our existing Rural Environmental Fund has increased the available funding to help us partner with farmers to navigate these changes and the many risks they face in operating long-term family businesses.
"This will help support a transition to future farming models which adapt to changing needs and are more resilient and recognise that restoring nature is essential for both national and farm-level resilience.”
The Crown Estate says it will provide an update on the progress of the targets in its 2026 annual report.
