The £65m drought package announced on a farm near Truro

A national funding announcement does not often start in a Cornish field. This one did. Andy Burnham visited a family-run farm near Truro over the weekend, alongside Farming Minister Stephen Morgan, and used the trip to set out £65 million of new support for farmers across England after the driest July on record.

What the £65 million actually covers

The biggest single line is £50 million extra for the Sustainable Farming Incentive 2026, taking that scheme’s total budget to £290 million. Up to £15 million goes towards on-farm reservoirs, money intended to help farms store water for future dry summers rather than fix this one.

The rest is about rules rather than cash. Farmers in environmental schemes are normally barred from grazing or cutting wildlife habitat land until later in the year. With grass barely growing, that land is often the only feed left. The government’s announcement allows them to use it without losing their payments, provided they do not damage the soil. The same was done in the 2022 drought, and the flexibility covers the Sustainable Farming Incentive, Countryside Stewardship and legacy stewardship agreements.

There is also a promise of faster water access. Farm abstraction is licensed and subject to hands-off flow limits that stop abstraction when river flows drop too low. Those limits stay. What changes is the speed and paperwork of varying a licence, and it becomes easier to share water between holdings so it reaches the farms that need it most.

One detail matters for anyone wondering where the money came from. It is not new money. The £65 million comes from reprioritisation inside Defra’s existing farming budget.

Why the announcement landed in Cornwall

Drought status in England is declared by the Environment Agency, and Devon and Cornwall are on the list. Around three-quarters of England is now in drought, and this is the third one in five years.

The pressure on farming across Cornwall shows up in the harvest more than anywhere. Andy Burnham said he was meeting farmers in the South West who had brought in the earliest harvest of their working lives and watched the yield come in well down on what it should be. Lower income, higher costs, no rain forecast.

“The ability to grow our own food is national security, and I will treat it that way,” he said. “This is the third drought in five years. Farmers are at the sharp end of a changing climate, and they should not be carrying that risk alone.”

Environment Secretary Angela Eagle said she was aware of the pressure the dry weather is putting on farm businesses, and that farmers are facing some of the toughest conditions in decades.

The scale of the squeeze on water shows in the licensing figures. The Environment Agency recorded more than 1,500 licence restrictions in the week to 12 August alone.

The reservoir money, and the response to it

The reservoir element is the part the rural sector had been pushing hardest for. The Country Land and Business Association has been lobbying government to reform permitted development rights and the abstraction licensing system so farmers can build on-farm reservoirs more easily, and to make sure a reservoir and its associated equipment can qualify for full expensing or the £1 million annual investment allowance.

Some of that has landed. The government says it will reduce unnecessary barriers and update planning guidance, with the detail due in an updated National Planning Policy Framework. It is also working with the National Farmers’ Union on an evidence-led review of permitted development rights for on-farm reservoirs.

The CLA’s response was welcoming and pointed in roughly equal measure.

“The government has reallocated existing money from the farming budget to help farmers combat drought,” said Gavin Lane, President of the Country Land and Business Association. “This is a welcome and pragmatic move, but little more than a temporary fix.”

On the reservoirs specifically, Gavin said the move to make them easier to build was a positive step, but that the £15 million on offer “will fund a fraction of the reservoirs we need”. He added that it needs to become a sustained programme, with planning and abstraction lined up behind it.

His last point is the one Cornish farm businesses will recognise. “The vast bulk of the cost of building on-farm reservoirs will still fall on farmers, who are already facing record costs as well as absorbing new tax burdens,” he said. “Today’s announcement is a step forward, but it will not change the reality that farming remains exceptionally difficult in this business environment, and in a country that does not have a plan for climate change adaption.”

What comes next

The planning changes are the piece to watch, because they decide whether the reservoir money turns into actual reservoirs or stays a headline figure. Those details arrive with the updated National Planning Policy Framework.

Beyond that, ministers point to plans already announced for nine new reservoirs nationally, and almost £100 million going into the country’s response to wildfires and extreme weather. The government says the UK food system is resilient and the dry weather is not expected to affect national food security.

Which is a national statement. In a field outside Truro, the harvest is already in, and it came in early and light.