Developing payment-by-results approaches for agri-environment schemes: Experience from an arable trial in England

There is increasing interest in the potential for payment-by-results approaches to be adopted more widely in agri-environment schemes to address some of the limitations of conventional action-based approaches. To date, researchers have almost exclusively applied the approach in grassland farming systems. This paper reports on the results from an English, pure payment-by-results pilot scheme that tested the delivery of two environmental objectives: provision of winter bird food for farmland birds and provision of pollen and nectar resources for pollinating insects in arable farming systems, and incorporated farmer self-assessments. The method employed an assessment of environmental outcomes using an experimental design, recording the number of plants/seed heads per quadrat for specified species and an analysis of farmers’ attitudes using a qualitative survey. The results from 15 farms revealed improved environmental performance compared to similar measures implemented under conventional agri-environment schemes. The analysis also revealed a high correlation of farmer self-assessment of results with expert assessments. Survey findings also identified farmers’ views on the advantages (flexibility and freedom, fairness) and disadvantages (risk of failure and non-payment) of such an approach. •Potential found for payment-by-results approach to conservation in arable systems.•Payment-by-results options in arable schemes out-performed action-based ones.•Accuracy of farmers’ self-assessments were similar to those of experts.•Farmers concerned about failure risk and non-payment but fairness of approach valued.