---
title: a hectare map is not a payment
canonical_url: https://ensurance.app/guide/a-hectare-map-is-not-a-payment
markdown_url: https://ensurance.app/guide/a-hectare-map-is-not-a-payment.md
subtitle: "5.1 million hectares mapped, 1.3 million pounds in year one"
category: nature-finance
---

# a hectare map is not a payment

*5.1 million hectares mapped, 1.3 million pounds in year one*

A hectare map is a picture of ground. In October 2025, Lloyds Banking Group published one covering 5.1 million hectares of UK farmland, about 30% of the country's utilised agricultural area. The soil under those fields, the hedges that slow the water, and the ground that dries first were already there. The map recorded them. It did not pay the person who keeps them.

That ground is the subject. A southern pine stand, a mountain snowpack, and the plants holding a slope exist whether or not anyone buys a certificate. **Nature Value at Risk**, the percentage Lloyds and Earth Blox printed for corporate sites in September 2026, is a figure a bank can read. The living system here is the [healthy soils](/healthy-soils.ensurance?from=guide) under the mapped fields, and ensurance funds that system. It is not the percentage.

:::johnson
**a mapped hectare is not a paid hectare.** — The screen, the farm visits, and the year-one fund are three facts. Read them apart.

[a loan a farm can service →](/guide/what-regenerative-farmland-debt-actually-is?from=guide)
:::

## the screen, the visits, and the fund

**5.1 million hectares** is the geospatial pilot in *Farming with nature*, written with Earth Blox, Savills, and Soil Association Exchange. Lloyds puts that area at about 30% of the UK's **16.8 million hectares** of utilised agricultural area, citing Defra as of 1 June 2024. The bank says it serves more than **46,000** farming businesses. Those hectares are a satellite screen of that book. The map is not 46,000 field surveys.

**685** is a different count. Soil Association Exchange combined on-farm assessments with the Earth Blox map. Exchange's write-up of the first 685 farms runs from summer 2022 through August 2024 and covers about **240,000 hectares**. A later line in the same Lloyds report says the Exchange baseline was then **850** farms, and that line gives no hectare figure. Keep 685, 850, and the 5.1 million hectare screen apart.

**£1.3 million** is a third fact, from July 2026. Farmers Weekly's account of the launch, by Lloyds Banking Group and Wildfarmed, gives the Food & Nature Resilience Fund a year-one ambition of £1.3 million, expected to grow. The launch described banks, water companies, insurers, and food businesses as the kind of pool. The organizations named as committed at launch are **Severn Trent**, **Affinity Water**, and **AXA XL**. Farmers are paid for verified improvements in soil, biodiversity, water quality, and carbon, while the land stays in food production.

That £1.3 million, in the Farmers Weekly account, is a year-one ambition. It is not the finance outcome of the 5.1 million hectare map. The same account reported that eligibility was not published at launch. A mapped farm has not, on these documents, been told it qualifies. It is not a verdict that the fund failed.

## what the hectares were marking

The 2025 report also published opportunity hectares. These are suitability, where a practice might fit. They are not a Nature Value at Risk figure, and they are not acres already funded.

| opportunity | hectares | the living ground |
| --- | --- | --- |
| habitat creation, high potential | 1.2 million | places that could hold more habitat |
| tree and hedge planting | 600,000 | hedges and trees for flood, erosion, water, livestock, and carbon |
| drought-prone farmland | 700,000 | fields on mains and groundwater where water management could improve |
| cover cropping | over 500,000 | about a tenth of the 5.1 million hectare screen |

Soil, hedges, and drought-prone ground are the living subject. Suitability says where they might matter inside the mapped book. A payment is money that reaches the person who does the work, under a rule that person can read.

FarmingUK's account points at about **3 million hectares** of UK arable, and says **92%** of farmers cite money as the barrier. That arable area is its own figure, separate from the screen and from the year-one sum. The opportunity rows for habitat, trees and hedges, drought-prone farmland, and cover crops can sit on the same ground. They are not added into the 3 million hectares of arable.

## what a reader can actually use

### what is a regenerative farming fund?

A **regenerative farming fund**, as Lloyds and Wildfarmed described it, is a pooled payment for practice. The launch described banks, water companies, insurers, and food businesses as the kind of pool. The organizations named as committed at launch are **Severn Trent**, **Affinity Water**, and **AXA XL**. Farmers are paid for verified work on soil, biodiversity, water quality, and carbon. Food stays in production. The £1.3 million year-one figure, and the unpublished eligibility, are from the Farmers Weekly account. On that account the fund cannot be treated as open to a named farm.

A practice payment and a loan are both real; neither is a wallet for a named watershed. A loan a farm can service has a borrower, a schedule, and a crop that pays it back. That instrument is [what regenerative farmland debt actually is](/guide/what-regenerative-farmland-debt-actually-is?from=guide).

The 2025 report described an Agriculture Transition Finance product as launching before the end of 2025. This page does not verify that launch. The named payment in public is the July 2026 fund.

### how is a farmland map different from a payment?

| object | what it counts | what stays open |
| --- | --- | --- |
| the 5.1 million hectare screen | part of the UK farm map, about 30% of utilised agricultural area | which farms were walked, and which were paid |
| the 685 assessments | farms visited, about 240,000 hectares in Exchange's write-up | the rest of the screen |
| a later line in the same Lloyds report | the Exchange baseline was then 850 farms, and that line gives no hectare figure | a farm count kept apart from the 5.1 million hectare screen |
| the £1.3 million ambition | money named for year one, in the Farmers Weekly account | who qualifies; that same account left eligibility unpublished at launch |

Lloyds Banking Group is the UK's largest agricultural lender behind the map and the fund. Lloyd's of London is a different institution. The September 2026 percentage is a share of value at one site or one sourcing region in a hard year, one service at a time: [what nature value at risk actually measures](/guide/what-nature-value-at-risk-actually-measures?from=guide). A hectare of suitability on a UK loan book is a different object.

### does the lloyds fund take land out of production?

No. Farmers are paid while food stays in production. Andy Cato, of Wildfarmed, made the same point in public: the payment should not force a choice between food and nature. Soil, biodiversity, water quality, and carbon are funded on land that still grows food. Unpublished eligibility, in the Farmers Weekly account, means the launch did not name who can apply. It leaves the rule for a later notice.

## where to take the distinction

Read the map as a map. Ask which fields dry first, which hedges are missing, and which payment has a payer and a rule in writing. Severn Trent and Affinity Water sit downstream of farmland. AXA XL is the insurer on the same fund. Those positions show why a practice payment can have buyers. They do not convert the 2025 screen into cash.

[Food and agriculture](/solutions/sectors/food-agriculture?from=guide&topic=nature-value-at-risk) holds soil, water, and the crop as one operating dependency. [Healthy soils](/healthy-soils.ensurance?from=guide) names the soil itself, as a system that can be funded, rather than as a polygon on a national screen. The Food & Nature Resilience Fund belongs to Lloyds Banking Group and Wildfarmed. Keep the screen, the visits, and the payment in three columns.

## sources

[Farming with nature, Lloyds Banking Group (October 2025)](https://25218570.fs1.hubspotusercontent-eu1.net/hubfs/25218570/Customer%20content/Lloyds%20Banking%20Group%20Report%20-%20Farming%20with%20nature%202025.pdf) — the 5.1 million hectare screen, the Defra area figure, the client count, the opportunity hectares, and the Exchange baseline.

[Soil Association Exchange, From Data to Decisions](https://www.soilassociationexchange.com/datatodecisions) — the first 685 farms, about 240,000 hectares, summer 2022 through August 2024.

[Farmers Weekly](https://www.fwi.co.uk/business/payments-schemes/lloyds-bank-and-wildfarmed-team-up-for-new-funding-scheme) — £1.3 million year-one ambition; eligibility not published at announcement.

[FarmingUK](https://www.farminguk.com/news/lloyds-and-wildfarmed-launch-fund-to-back-regen-farming_68749.html) — about 3 million hectares of UK arable, and 92% of farmers citing money as the barrier.

## the series

- [what nature value at risk actually measures](/guide/what-nature-value-at-risk-actually-measures?from=guide)
- [the fibre grows on land the mill does not own](/guide/the-fibre-grows-on-land-the-mill-does-not-own?from=guide)
- [the same cooling plant, two snowpacks](/guide/the-same-cooling-plant-two-snowpacks?from=guide)
- [a hectare map is not a payment](/guide/a-hectare-map-is-not-a-payment?from=guide)
- [fund the stand the percentage points at](/guide/fund-the-stand-the-percentage-points-at?from=guide)