Farming in the winter

What should you do before bad weather hits?

• Read the advice on this web page as you prepare for winter weather. Special arrangements may apply in exceptional circumstances.
• Make sure your stores are empty at the end of each summer. Check their condition and put right any defects.
• Understand the options available to you to avoid spreading to land in unsuitable weather or ground conditions. Make arrangements so that other options are readily available.

What you must not do

You should never apply manure or other organic waste to land when the soil is:

• waterlogged
• frozen hard
• covered in snow
• cracked down to field drains or backfill
• at risk of waterlogging if heavy rain is forecast in the next 48 hours

This is because you might pollute surface water or groundwater and damage the soil.

This long-standing good practice is given in the Code of Good Agricultural Practice (CoGAP), and is mandatory in Nitrate Vulnerable Zones (NVZs). Please follow this good practice to help prevent pollution by run-off to rivers and streams, or leaching to groundwater.

You must not spread slurries, manures and other materials with high available nitrogen content during closed periods in NVZs. On other land, CoGAP advises not to spread unless there is a crop requirement.

You should be able to cope during most winters if you have sufficient safe storage for slurries, manures and dirty water.

Special arrangements in extreme winter conditions

We have published guidance on what you should do in freezing weather:

• Slurry, milk and waste spreading on agricultural land - emergency cold weather guidance (PDF, 90KB)

Key points of this guidance

• When exceptional conditions acutely impact on industry, Government and the Environment Agency will agree a declaration and publicise it. This declaration will set out how we propose to apply the rules in these circumstances.
  
  
• The rules will be specific to the circumstances, and will not give complete freedom. For example, heavy snow in early winter may prevent milk collections and prompt a declaration in respect of milk spreading, but this would not be reason to allow spreading of slurry. If prolonged freezing conditions lead to a risk of overflowing slurry stores, a slurry declaration may be made allowing limited low risk spreading (only after the NVZ closed period).
  
  
• Disposal to land will generally be a last resort. You should have a contingency plan and have considered all other options first.
  
  
• You must take every precaution to avoid pollution when carrying out spreading. We may prosecute if pollution occurs.
  
  
• You must contact us in advance of any spreading that is done under a declaration. This allows us to check that your proposals are reasonable, and gives us information to help assess the overall impact of the conditions on the environment.
  
  
• Producers of off-farm organic manures that are normally recycled by spreading to land should have their own contingency arrangements for cold weather. Specific declarations may be made about these materials.