SFI Soil Management Package
Background
The Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) soil management package provides a solution to soil health monitoring, legislation compliance and data recording and information collection to help improve cereal crop yields and understand business position when assessing private environmental payment schemes. The cost of the package can be heavily subsidised by government support schemes.
Why and How
The need
Cereal yields have reached a ceiling after many years of increase due to improved management tools, chemical innovation and management practices. Emphesis is now being placed on improving biological activity within the soil to make further gains on crop yields.
Through increasing forms of legislation farm businesses are being asked to record more information about the soils they manage. The legislation is in place to protect natural resources for the wider population.
Opportunities to diversify income through changing management practices and protecting natural resources, including soil, are developing year on year. For any private payments land managers will need to demonstrate a starting pint or 'baseline' for their soil.
Our Solutions
The SFI soil management package uses annual soil and manure analysis to produce soil, manure and nutrient management plans with associated risk maps to ensure compliance with legislation.
A nutrient budget and field by field soil health scorecards are also provided to build a picture of long term soil health, including biological activity, and nutrient use efficiency trends.
The soil health scorecard helps to inform decisions about the viability of further environmental payments in the future.
Depending upon the size of your business and the extent of soil analysis the majority or whole of the package could be funded through the Sustainable Farming Incentive soils standard.
Please call or email to arrange a no obligation discussion about implementing any of our services within your business.