WORCESTERSHIRE farmers could be set to benefit from some moving of the environmental goalposts by the European Union.

The recent changes in the latest Rural Development for England, made by the EU may have seen the removal of the four management plans as options under environmental stewardship, but the spend on agri-environment schemes will be significantly increased, ensuring entry level stewardship remains available to all farmers. This paves the way for a huge investment in rural areas.

"Losing the management plan options may be a disappointment for some farmers. But just because they have come out of agreements farmers should not discount environmental stewardship," said Alex Blair from ADAS. "ELS is still very worthwhile for farmers. Ever since the scheme started in 2005 we have been recommending farmers build in a 10 per cent buffer so it may be that they are still above the points threshold when the management plans have been taken out." Launched in March 2005, and run by Natural England, environmental stewardship enables farmers in England to secure regular payments for undertaking simple environmental protection and enhancement work on their land.

More than 4,366 farmers in the West Midlands have already signed up and just over 515,014 hectares of land in this region are now under agreement. Under the ELS agreement farmers can select from more than 50 environmental management options to make up a required 30 points threshold.

Nationally there are around 1,800 provisional ELS agreements which include management plans. In the West Midlands, 287 provisional ELS agreements include management plan options and of these 204 will be short of points once the plans are removed.

Each of the management plan options carries a two or three- point value. If a farmer has chosen to include all four plans then this constitutes nearly a third of his points total. "If a farmer does find that he is now short of points this may be a disappointment but there are ways round it and other options can be substituted," Mr Blair said. "The West Midlands has a wide variety of farms and different ELS options will be most suitable depending on the crops grown and livestock kept. Most farmers will be able to include options such as hedge or ditch management, but conversely buffer strips are only available on arable land or intensive grassland. In less intensive parts of the farm the permanent grassland option should be considered."

Two new options, which could also be considered are maintenance of weatherproof traditional farm buildings and mixed stocking in less favoured areas. Details can be found on the Defra website at: www.defra.gov .uk/erdp/pdfs/es/HLS-Handbook-addendum.pdf