Tests and Trials: A Review of Tools and Applications

Tender description

Environmentally sustainable farming is fundamental to our new approach to England's agricultural system. As part of the Environmental Land Management Schemes, Defra is introducing three schemes that reward the delivery of environmental benefits: the Sustainable Farming Incentive, the Local Nature Recovery scheme and the Landscape Recovery scheme. Tests and Trials are important components of an incremental approach to building the Future Schemes. Tests and Trials work began in 2018 as a vehicle to engage with a wide range of farmers, land managers and stakeholders to harness their ideas to conduct research to contribute to the design of the future schemes. Farmers and land managers taking part in the Tests and Trials co-design elements or building blocks of the new schemes in their real-life environment. We use this evidence and learning they generate to understand farmer and market behaviour and to help shape and inform scheme design. As well as Testing the key building blocks of the new schemes, we are also Trialling new ideas and innovative approaches to understand if and how they could be built into the new schemes. A range of Tests and Trials are testing and/or developing a variety of platforms, tools and applications to help farmers and land managers to deliver the new schemes. We wish to procure a review into the applicability and effectiveness of these platforms, tools and applications to help us understand they role they could have in the delivery of the new schemes. We also wish to procure an analysis of any additional tools or applications in the market, which could benefit the delivery of the Sustainable Farming Incentive, Local Nature Recovery and Landscape Recovery Schemes from a payments perspective. We welcome you to join a pre-market engagement meeting via Teams on the 17th November 2021, 2 - 3.30pm, to find out more. Please use the following link on the 17th to join the session: https://tinyurl.com/4vdkx5