Kitty Thompson, the Conservative Environment Network's senior nature programme manager, said: 'The nature-friendly farming budget is absolutely critical for increasing farmers' resilience to flooding, bolstering our food security, boosting biodiversity, and tackling climate change.
'Having depreciated in value over the last parliament due to inflation, the government should be working out how to index this budget in line with price rises.
'Unfortunately, with financial pressures mounting, it instead seems primed to cut the budget at the next available opportunity.
'With a cut of £100 million said to slash the amount of nature-friendly farmland funded in England by 239,000 hectares, the ambitions we have for our land will only be as strong as the budget underpinning them.'
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