The Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI), part of the government's post-Brexit system of payments rewarding nature-friendly farming practices, was relaunched this year after an overhaul which included a £100,000 cap for individual businesses.

The first application window for SFI26 opened on June 30, prioritising small farms of between 3ha and 50ha, and farms without an existing ELM revenue agreement.

A day later, Defra confirmed that 25pc of the £60m "Window 1" budget had already been allocated following a surge of applications.

A Defra blog post on July 1 says: "As expected when Window 1 opened, demand was strong on the first day, with a high number of........

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