A Better Way to Access Essential Funding
JustFarm, the industry-leading platform helping thousands of farms manage SFI, Countryside Stewardship, and Capital Grants, has announced the launch of its SFI Planner, a new tool designed to help farmers and agents plan Sustainable Farming Incentive agreements with clarity, speed, and confidence.
The launch comes at a critical time for the industry, as SFI 2026 introduces fewer high-value actions, stricter compatibility rules, and a £100,000 agreement cap, forcing farmers to rethink how they structure agreements to maintain income.
While the scheme has been simplified on paper, the reality for many farms is increased complexity. With over 70 actions, evolving guidance, and complex stacking rules, planning agreements manually has become time-consuming, error-prone, and difficult to scale.
A Growing Challenge for Farmers
Many farms have already seen projected income fall following the removal of higher-paying actions. To make up the shortfall, agreements now need to be built from a larger number of smaller actions, carefully combined across parcels.
At the same time, guidance remains fragmented across thousands of pages, making it difficult to understand what applies to each farm and what combinations are allowed.
Mistakes can lead to rejected applications, reduced payments, or failed inspections, putting vital farm income at risk.
Turning Complexity Into Clarity
The JustFarm SFI Planner is an interactive agreement builder that allows farmers and agents to plan SFI agreements visually on a map of the farm.
It shows:
- Which actions actually fit their land
- Automatically filter out ineligible options
- Spot conflicts before mistakes are made
- See estimated payments as they build
- Find the right combination to maximise their income
- Share their plan and collaborate with others working on the farm
At the core of the tool is JustFarm’s compatibility engine, which combines 40+ map-based data layers with DEFRA policy rules to show, in a simple map-based output, exactly what is eligible on each field.
This removes the need to manually cross-reference guidance documents, check stacking rules, or calculate payments in spreadsheets.
Built for Farmers and Advisors
The Planner is designed for both farmers managing their own agreements and agents working across multiple client farms.
Farmers can use it to take control of their own planning and understand the full earning potential of their land, while agents can plan faster, reduce administrative workload, and scale across more farms without increasing headcount.
“Farmers shouldn’t need to be policy experts to access scheme income,” said James Stretton, Co-founder of JustFarm. “The Planner answers a simple question: what fits my land, and what’s it worth? We handle the complexity so farmers can focus on farming.”
Tommy Neeld, Co-founder of JustFarm, added: “Planning SFI agreements manually has become one of the biggest bottlenecks for both farmers and agents. What used to take hours, or even days, can now be done in minutes.”
Speed Matters as Application Windows Open
With SFI 2026 applications opening in limited windows, timing is becoming critical.
Farmers and agents will need to have their plans ready early, as funding is expected to be allocated quickly once applications open. Late planning could mean missed opportunities or delayed access to agreements.
The JustFarm SFI Planner allows users to build and structure full agreements in minutes rather than hours or days, giving them a clear advantage when application windows open.
By removing the need for manual planning and instantly showing what works, the SFI Planner enables farmers and advisors to move quickly, submit with confidence, and secure value before funding is exhausted.
Unlocking Missed Income
A key benefit of the Planner is its ability to surface actions that farmers may not have considered.
With fewer high-value options available under SFI 2026, identifying the right combination of actions is now essential to maintaining agreement income. Many farms are no longer able to rely on a small number of well-known options and instead need to build value across a wider mix of actions.
By showing all compatible actions across each parcel, the Planner helps farmers uncover additional income opportunities that would otherwise be missed.
In one early case, a farm facing a £7,000 drop in projected SFI income (compared to what they received under their previous SFI agreement) used the Planner to identify alternative actions and completely recover the shortfall saying the planner was a “game changer” for them.
For many farms, the difference is not whether income exists, but whether it can be identified and structured correctly.
Availability
The JustFarm Planner is available now.
Farmers can create a free JustFarm account to get started, with the option to unlock full planning functionality for £195 + VAT.
To celebrate its launch, Farmers with existing JustFarm Pro subscriptions can access the planner for FREE for a limited time.
For more information, visit:
https://justfarm.app
