Soils: understanding and managing your farm’s most important asset

Understanding soil is a critical first step in maintaining and improving soil quality to safeguard the farm business for the future. Soil protection is a key part of Defra’s 2023 Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) where farmers can receive payments for documenting the condition of the soil and completing soil testing.

BIP is offering these workshops to help farmers and landowners understand their soils, how to manage them, and about the requirements of the SFI Soils Options.

The workshop will cover:

• How to identify your soils, by assessing soil texture by hand
• How to assess soil condition by examining soils for compaction and run off
• Assessing soil health through structure, aeration and earthworm counts
• How to take representative soil samples
• Steps in creating or improving your soil management plan
• The requirements of the SFI soil standards

Eligibility:

This workshop is available to any farmer or land manager in Devon, Somerset, Dorset or Cornwall currently in receipt of BPS payments.

To be eligible to participate in the Future Farming Resilience project and receive subsequent one-to-one support or attend further workshops, you will be required to complete a Monitoring Information form. Forms will be provided by your advisor, at a workshop, or emailed to you after an online workshop. Please ensure forms are completed swiftly. Please be aware that BIP may limit further access to specialist workshops or one-to-one advice if the form is not completed.

If you have any questions please call us on 01837 659 059 or email team@businessinfopoint.co.uk. Please check our privacy policy and Devon County Council’s privacy policy to see how we store and manage your submitted data.