Identify and Work with Sellers

Key points

• DIME focuses on establishing a system where farmers can be funded to adjust their current grazing practices, to provide natural flood management benefits in the sub-catchments of the Upper Monnow.

• The Wye and Usk Foundation (WUF) has taken a more personal, direct approach to recruiting farmers in these areas, with one-to-one contact and small group meetings with farmers and key land managers.  

• WUF has formed DIME’s methodology with the input of farmers, listening to their opinions when designing the level of intervention and monitoring methods to provide data for the business case and model. 

• Due to the project operating across England and Wales, DIME has had to take a different approach to recruiting farmers and how potential future payments could align with different subsidies and governmental policies across England and Wales. 

• DIME has involved extensive external hydrological modelling, which has highlighted an enormous potential for flood risk reduction in downstream communities through land use change in the project area.

 

Landscape Profile 

The DIME (Delivering Innovative Markets for Ecosystems) project operates across an area of largely uniform pastoral land in the Upper Monnow catchment, feeding into the River Wye. Sheep farming covers around 60% of the land in the sub-catchments across the boundaries of England and Wales. The area is comprised of around 10,000 hectares and 150 different farm holdings, with mainly smaller farms sized between 50 and 100 hectares.  

These areas are facing a range of environmental issues, such as major downstream flooding and low water quality due to pollution and field run-off, with the conditions of the River Wye being categorised as ‘unfavourable’ under SSSI categorisation. 

The Wye and Usk Foundation (WUF) created the DIME project to address the issue of flooding linked to sheep grazing practices that impact the rate of water absorption in upstream fields, using Natural Flood Management (NFM) solutions. The ambition of the project to ensure that the payments to farmers are enough to change their sheep grazing habits and that participation in projects such as DIME become a “no brainer for farmers”, according to James Hawkins, Natural Flood Management Lead at WUF.  

 

Preparing for farmer engagement 

To prepare for land manager engagement, WUF used its existing network of farmers and land manager connections to find farmers with viable land who would be open to a NFM project. To identify this, data from the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology’s (CEH) Land Cover Maps, was assessed alongside flow maps to determine which landholdings would provide the greatest NFM benefits.  

Once key land managers were identified, the offer was framed up. This included calculating the approximate payment per hectare per year that farmers receive from existing practices, including sheep grazing and subsidies. To get land managers to participate, DIME aims for its payments to match or exceed these. 

As a cross-country project, DIME is required to navigate different government subsidy schemes for environmental uplift. England operates the Sustainable Farming Initiative (SFI), while Wales launched the Sustainable Farming Scheme (SFS) in early 2025. Operating across these two jurisdictions has created both opportunities and challenges, according to Hawkins.  

Recent policy changes in England – such as the early closing of the SFI envelope – have caused uncertainty and distrust among farmers, according to Hawkins, leading to DIME taking a more cautious approach. In Wales, SFS’s early-stage development has meant that some land managers have been more willing to work with partners on their business planning, to explore stacked payments and adapting their practices.  

The differences in underlying farming culture have also had an impact on DIME’s approach. Hawkins comments that in Wales, it has been relatively easier to attract interest due to some sheep farmers looking for diversification of income. In England, there was found to be a more intensive culture of farming, leading to a reluctance to change practices. 

 

Meeting farmers 

Hawkins remarked that it is important to initially have a key farmer or land manager who is already interested and “is willing to be a vector and disseminate the information amongst the farming community. It’s just so much more impactful”.  

On the English side of the project, WUF has a longer history of engagement with farm advisors and agents, which has helped to address scepticism from farmers, due to those in trusted roles being seen to engage with DIME. WUF engaged with these intermediaries first  that to spread awareness of the project and help to increase its legitimacy amongst farmers. 

Over the course of nine months, WUF also met with many farmers directly. This has included visiting houses and giving farmers a short presentation, taking them through the potential benefits and risks of DIME’s proposal.  

In Wales, an informal meeting was organised at a local pub to provide more information to farmers. WUF encouraged farmers to attend by emphasising the potential benefits of diversification of income, the opportunity to determine interventions, and that attendance required no obligations to the Project. The meeting also helped to address elements of distrust that some farmers had expressed about an eNGO influencing farming practices. Hawkins commented that “a free dinner was also a massive draw, it helped to underline that at the very least, farmers had nothing to lose and a warm meal to gain!” 

This informal event drew strong engagement: Hawkins invited 20 people in the catchment, with roughly 75% attending the event. A parallel event in England was hosted in the English part of the project area in December 2025.  

 

Intervention planning 

DIME’s approach to intervention planning with farmers has been to present a list of NFM interventions to each farmer and discuss the practicalities of these interventions and levels of commitment. The list was derived through initial desktop modelling of the two sub-catchments, conducted by an external hydrologist, which indicated what NFM interventions would yield different levels of flood risk reduction.  

The interventions include alternating sheep grazing patterns, grazing location and the building of shelterbelts and buffer strips. The needs of buyers were also considered, as they tend to operate on five-year cycles and require faster results. Key considerations have included the levels of flood risk reduction each intervention gives, but also the risk of environmental leakage to other catchments (such as shifting sheep to new fields) and capital costs of long-term interventions (such as shelter belts).  

The intervention planning stage is currently exploratory, as DIME has not yet established the exact flood risk reduction outcomes its potential buyers are seeking. Hawkins states:

           “the amount of land we would need to negate a 1-in-30-year flood event on a key stretch of railway could be anywhere between 500-3,700 hectares of farmer land – depending on the type of intervention used. So, we need to find if there is 500 hectares of land that we can feasibly change, which would dramatically change our pitch to the buyers and require a lot less money.”  

A key challenge of this phase has been the uncertainty of its model baseline of the catchment, which may not be accurate due to the reliance on desktop data and remote sensing, which can be solved by ground-truthing and more extensive engagement with the farmers. WUF have secured funding with support of the findings from the DIME project: 

        “We’re planning a six-month feasibility stage, where we go to 20-30 farms, have several days with each of them to talk about their farming practices, gauge their likely input and capture accurate data on their land use and condition. We can then compare this with our GIS data and strengthen our confidence in what we can offer our potential buyers.” 

Extensive engagement is also needed to build a common understanding with the farmers of NFM interventions and practices, due to DIME finding that some farmers having different definitions of practices, such as rotational grazing.   

 

Pricing  

As of December 2025, pricing conversations with land managers are at an early stage. Hawkins states the importance of not approaching farmers with misleading payment figures for their interventions, before the desired NFM outcomes and pricing levels are determined with buyers.  

DIME has established the approximate payment per hectare / per year that farmers typically receive in the area for existing practices and uses this to determine the payment rate that it should match or exceed to secure farmer participation.  

When interventions are confirmed, a set price will be established for hosting and maintaining the interventions, with payments to farmers being relative to their contribution to flood risk reduction. The unit will be determined by buyer need but can be assessed in contribution to reduction in annual exceedance probability (AEP) or volume of peak flow reduction (megalitres/hr). These payments expressed in £/ha will allow farmers to integrate this into their business planning, whilst demonstrating the level of risk reduction to buyers.  

Contract lengths with farmers are also being determined, dependent on the type of interventions used by farmers. For example, shelter belts take several years to establish and deliver NFM benefits, whereas destocking sheep on fields can yield flood risk reduction within a year. A rolling contract system is being considered to allow farmers the choice to extend their practices. To date, WUF has explored existing contract templates from similar projects such as the ARC (Aire Resilience Company) in Leeds, which are based around fees paid to farmers to rest or modify land use on a yearly basis. 

  

Development of a governance structure  

DIME’s governance structure has not been clarified but its intention is to establish an SPV structure that aggregates sellers and buyers, potentially using a Community Interest Company (CIC) – this would allow the formation of a “catchment market” that DIME describes. However, Hawkins emphasises the need to get complete stakeholder agreement on this structure before it is developed further.  

Hawkins also stated that some form of monitoring and enforcement will be required to provide security for buyers. The current proposal is to employ an external individual to avoid a conflict of interest to carry out monitoring. Monitoring of farmland may include drone surveys to track sheep movements and verify compliance, and more traditional forms of monitoring, including farm visits and walkovers. Farmers have expressed their support of these, citing fairness and ensuring that all landowners/managers entering the scheme need to be held accountable for ensuring the delivery of agreed interventions.  

Current plans for the company structure include monitoring staff being funded from payments made by the farmers, as a fraction of the payments they receive for hosting the NFM interventions. This would function as a service fee for engaging with the market, channelled through the SPV.  

 

Next Steps  

DIME has evolved from a pilot project in the Dulas Brook catchment into the Resilient Rivers Monnow programme operating at the scale of the wider Monnow catchment. The work has established a clear pipeline from farm-level interventions to quantified flood risk benefits and buyer investment.  

The funded Resilient Rivers Monnow Feasibility Stage (to September 2026) will focus on farm visits, data collection, monitoring, and market development to move the catchment market to the point of establishment.