SOIL MANAGEMENT PLANS
- Our knowledge of soils and how they behave means we are well equipped to supply you with a Soil Management Plan.
- Our aim is to produce a valuable management document that will help you minimise the environmental risk that your farm poses.
- Every UK farm has to complete a Soil Protection Review during 2006, and implement it during 2007. The Soil Protection Review is needed for cross compliance, however, you may have chosen a Soil Management Plan as an option for ELS points.
- We have looked in detail at the requirements for both schemes, and have produced a Soil Management Plan that will aid you in completing your Soil Protection Review, and cover you for ELS/HLS requirements.
- We use a system whereby we produce a map with your inherent risks clearly marked on it. Your inherent risks consist of soil type, slopes, buildings, watercourses, etc. This map is only produced once, and should be used to aid the creation of your Soil Management Plan. The map will also help you make important soil management decisions in subsequent years.
- We then analyse your cropping to decide whether you are growing high risk or low risk crops. High-risk crops include maize, potatoes, etc. Lower-risk crops include permanent grass and early sown cereals.
- The final stage of our Soil Management Plan treats each field as a separate entity. We allocate a colour to each field based on the inherent risks, and the cropping risks. From this we provide you with a field-by-field soil management action sheet that will help you minimise the risks of runoff or erosion, and comply with cross compliance and ELS requirements.