For Richard, accessing some of that £310m funding seemed straightforward enough. All he had to do was submit an application.
What he did not realise was that he was entering a race against thousands of other farmers for that limited pot of cash.
“We looked at 8am and it wasn’t live. I had things to do so I went to work on the farm,” he said.
“Checked again at lunchtime, it was live and I started. We had a few errors but I did get to the end of the form and submitted it.
“I was minutes too late and the scheme had been subscribed. The money pot was exhausted.”
Richard is among thousands of farmers who missed out after funding was snapped up within hours.
He believes smaller family farms may have been at a disadvantage.
While some larger businesses could dedicate staff to monitoring the application process, Richard spent the morning carrying out day-to-day work on the farm before returning to complete his submission.
The National Farmers’ Union (NFU) had already warned that demand could outstrip the available funding.
Helen Fisher, who farms near Atherstone and is deputy regional chair of the NFU Midlands, said: “The scheme opened and closed in six hours. Nobody had anticipated that level of demand.
“We had been warning Defra there would be high demand and 12,000 farmers just couldn’t get their applications in in time.”
