Nitrate Vulnerable Zones (NVZs) are areas designated as being at higher risk from agricultural nitrate pollution. When farming in these areas, there are limits imposed on the amount of manufactured and crop-available nitrogen from organic matter you can apply each year. NVZs are reviewed every four years by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) to account for any changes in nitrate pollution concentrations. Around 55% of land in England is in a designated NVZ, which remained unchanged at the last review in December 2020. 

You can find out if your farm is in an NVZ using the Environment Agency’s interactive map.

Enforced by the Environment Agency (EA), failure to comply with NVZ rules can lead to prosecution and fines. The Rural Payments Agency (RPA) also carry out inspections as part of cross compliance for other schemes to ensure that farmers and landowners follow the rules. If farmers and landowners do not obey the rules, they may receive reduced payments for the Basic Payment Scheme (BPS) and Countryside Stewardship as a result. 

There are plenty of resources out there to help those farming in an NVZ, with guidance on how to remain compliant. For example, the AHDB produce their annual Nutrient Management Guide (often referred to as RB209) to help farmers determine the rate and timing of nutrient applications, based on the nutrient requirements of the crop being grown. 

Aside from legislative requirements, farm assurance schemes are now looking at bringing in further standards that will require participants to keep nutrient management plans to be kept in order to attain their certification standards, regardless of whether the farm is located in a NVZ or not. 

With this in mind, we have put together a checklist of the key record-keeping requirements when farming in an NVZ and ideas for how you can use fieldmargin to follow them and keep records organised for inspections. Full up-to-date guidance can be found on the Defra website. 

Key record-keeping requirements in an NVZ

• The size of your farm
• A risk map
• Field records for crop sowing, spreading organic manure or manufactured fertiliser, yields of arable crops
• The number of livestock kept on your farm for the year and a calculation of the nitrogen produced by them
• Records of storage of manure, silage and slurries
• Records showing calculations of available nitrogen

Producing an NVZ risk map of your farm 🗺️

If you spread organic manure on your farm you have to have an up-to-date risk map which shows areas where there is a high risk of nitrogen run off into nearby watercourses.

Using the mapping tools and features in fieldmargin, you can produce the relevant records to jump through these hoops. Here’s how:

1. Map the farm’s fields in fieldmargin to determine farm size. Once you have your fields mapped out, the total farmed area will show at the top of the field list in the Fields tab.
   How to map fields
   Import fields using SBI 
2. Show each field and it’s area in hectares
   When you have mapped or imported your fields, the area of each will show when you select a field in the field list.
3. Upload any existing maps you have already.
   Upload any .pdf maps (e.g., drainage maps) to fieldmargin to add them as a layer on top of the other mapping in fieldmargin 
4. Add detail to your map using notes and features. You must map the following information:

• Areas with sandy or shallow soils
  Add this as a note attached to a field, or put it in the field name or field ID
• Land with a slope greater than 12 degrees
• Land drains (except if they are sealed and impermeable)
  Either upload your paper drainage maps, or re-map them as features
• Sites suitable for temporary field heaps (if you intend to use them to store manure)
  Map in fieldmargin as notes, sub-fields, or features
• Land that has a low run-off (if you intend to use if for spreading during the storage period to reduce your storage capacity requirement)
  Map in fieldmargin as notes, sub-fields, or features
• All surface waters on your holding and land within 10m of them
  Map these areas as features in fieldmargin
• All springs, wells and boreholes on your holding, and within 50m of the boundary of your holding, and land within 50m of these
  Map water sources as features in fieldmargin

🧹 Keep your digital farm map clutter-free and edit the visibility of these so you can focus on the rest of your farm.

Planning and recording nitrogen applications 💻

You must have records of the following field operations, which can all be recorded using Field Jobs (see below for more information on how):

• Sowing
• Organic manure
• Manufactured fertiliser
• Crop yield

You are also required to keep records of:

• Any tests or other methods used to assess soil nitrogen supply 
  Record these in Monitoring Sites in fieldmargin 
• Crop nitrogen requirements
  Add a note and attach to the relevant field
• Advice from a FACTS qualified adviser. 
  Attach supporting documents to a field by uploading it to a note and attaching the note to the relevant field(s)

Sowing

Using Field Jobs, you can record the required information about the drilling of a crop you intent to apply nitrogen fertiliser to. If you set these Field Jobs up in advance, it makes the record-keeping process in fieldmargin even easier as you don’t have to fiddle with the dates. 

Organic Manure Application 🐮

There are specific records you must keep when spreading organic manure on your fields, including:

The area treated – as you attach fields to a Field Job, their area is added to the Job. You can amend the worked area of each field for the highest level of accuracy. 

The type of manure and quantity applied –  if you use more than one type of organic manure (e.g. slurry and farmyard manure) you can set these up as different inputs and assign different nutrient contents for each. When you add an input to a fertilising Field Job, you can set the application rate or the total used in the job, and fieldmargin will do the calculations for you, using our Nutrient Management Tools.

The planned and actual date of application –  you can set up a due date for the Field Job to indicate when you plant to apply your manure by. This can be amended if you need to change your plans if the weather doesn’t do as it’s told! When you mark a Field Job as ‘complete’ the completion date is automatically recorded. You can edit this date if you are recording work after it has be completed. 

The application method –  this can be put in the job title or as a comment in the Field Job.

The total nitrogen content and amount of crop-available nitrogen – if you have set the nitrogen content of your input, the nitrogen applied will automatically be calculated. 

Manufactured Fertiliser Application 🚜

When spreading manufactured fertiliser you should record:

The date of application –  when you mark a Field Job as complete the completion date is automatically recorded. You can edit this date if you are recording work after it has been done.

The amount of nitrogen applied – you can set the percentage of Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potassium and other nutrients such as Sulphur when you create a fertiliser input. Fieldmargin also has some pre-set fertilisers with nutrient content for commonly used fertilisers such as Urea and Ammonium Nitrate.

When you set up your Field Job, the nitrogen applied is automatically calculated. You can also set a target nutrient rate, for example 50kg N/ha – and the quantity of fertiliser required for your job will be calculated.

Crop yield 🌾

For arable crops, you are required to record the yield harvested to show that this is in line with your estimated yield used to calculate maximum nitrogen (N-max) levels. You can do this by creating a Harvesting Field Job, where you can then record your yields per field. 

Checking you are within your N-max limit 🖐️

Fieldmargin’s Nutrient Report tracks the quantity of nutrients that have been applied per field broken down by Field Job. You can also click on a fertilising job to find out more about how and when it was applied.

You can also check the amount of fertiliser, manure, or other inputs applied to a field by selecting the ‘Reports’ tab where it shows the rate/ha and the total quantity applied.

Checking upcoming and completed work 📑

Select the to-do list to see upcoming field work and use the ‘History’ tab in the field menu to view key dates of fertiliser applications. The field history is particularly helpful to show, in chronological order, when work was done in that field so you have the evidence to prove that no applications have been made when restrictions do not permit (e.g., during the closed period)

Closed Period Dates

Closed periods are times in the growing season that farmers are not permitted to apply high readily available nitrogen fertilisers (both organic and manufactured) on farmland in designated NVZs.

Manufactured Fertiliser Closed Periods
Grassland: 15th September – 15th January
Tillage land: 1st September – 15th January

Organic Manure Closed Periods
Grassland
Sandy/ shallow soils: 1st September – 31st December
All other soils: 15th October – 31st January
Tillage Land
Sandy/ shallow soils: 1st August – 31st December
All other soils: 1st October – 31st January

Further information about these can be found on the Gov.uk website.

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Ready to start using fieldmargin as your tool of choice for NVZ and nutrient management record-keeping?

If you have any questions about how to get started or how fieldmargin could be useful on your farm you can get in touch at support@fieldmargin.com and we will be happy to help.

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