It is important to have a plan in place for soil erosion during a wet winter. As we have seen in previous years, a wet winter can cause catastrophic effects to fields. Every year we suggest creating a ‘just in case’ plan of what you are doing to help prevent soil erosion on your farm and what you will do if soil erosion occurs.
Erosion mitigation techniques
When ploughing your fields, a method called contour ploughing will help to minimise risk of soil erosion. The idea is that you plough across the slope or contour lines of the field rather than downwards, and in doing so create water breaks. This and establishing the crop horizontally will mean that as the crop grows and matures, it will create a natural break for water, slowing down the velocity, and therefore reducing the impact of run off and helping to stop row gully erosion.
Non-Inversion Cultivation should also be practiced where possible. This will help maintain as much residue cover on the soil’s surface, as possible. To do this, look at different types of tillage practices such as no till or minimum tillage. The less you disturb your soil the better the quality of it will be, which in favour will mean less soil erosion and minimum crop damage.
After the crop is harvested, you should plan what you will do next with the land. Leaving it bare over winter increases the soil erosion risk as the ground can be compacted and impermeable. If the field cannot be planted with the next crop, you should either leave in the stubbles from the previous crop or consider ways of improving the soil’s water infiltration as soon as the weather is suitable. This can be done through rough ploughing, subsoiling, or the use of a scuffler.
The best way of protecting soils though, is by keeping a cover on the ground throughout the Winter.
Using early maturing varieties of late harvest crops, such as Maize, will enable you to harvest the crop early enough to establish the next crop, before weather conditions worsen.
Green cover through the use of cover crops is another option; they are an easy solution to improving soil structure and can be grazed off if used in a mixed farming rotation. As mentioned in one of our previous posts, varying crops’ rooting lengths will improve soil quality and also help with the infiltration of water. Some spring cover crops can be incorporated in the Spring, and used as green manure. Leguminous cover crops will also add more nitrogen back into the soil, meaning less artificial nitrogen needs be used on the following crop.
Adding buffer strips to fields will also achieve the same outcome, they can also work to slow surface water and reduce topsoil erosion. If they are placed at the bottom of a sloping field or even partway down to break up a slope, they will work by trapping any loose sediment that may have been eroded and keep the topsoil within the field boundaries. This will reduce the number of nutrients, such as phosphate, being leached into watercourses.
Livestock ring feeders can cause large scale erosion during a wet winter, so we suggest regularly moving ring feeders if they must be in the field, or investing in concrete pads for permanent feeding stations. The Farming Rules for Water state that ring feeders must be placed over 10m away from any watercourses or ditches.
As well as moving feeders, we also suggest regularly moving the livestock, to avoid serious poaching, which leads to soil compaction and a greater risk of topsoil erosion.
You could be fined some of your Basic Payment if you have not taken all reasonable steps to prevent erosion over a single area of 1 or more hectares, or erosion caused by livestock trampling along a continuous stretch of a watercourse that is 20 or more metres long and 2 or more metres wide.
For more information on poaching and soil erosion, take a look at GAEC 5, under the Guide to Cross Compliance in England 2020:
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/guide-to-cross-compliance-in-england-2020/gaec-5-minimising-soil-erosion
