Boost your insights: Farmbench welcomes environmental schemes

A new feature of the Farmbench tool lets you include environmental schemes alongside your crop production. Whether these schemes are bolt-on options, land swaps or whole-farm approaches, you can now include these in your farm data.

This update allows you to both record the cost of establishing a scheme (such as SFI) and calculate net margin alongside your existing farming figures.

Sign in to your Farmbench account and decide which options apply to your enterprise.

Combinable crop grown with environmental elements, e.g. wheat and covercrop, or barley and no insecticide.

Enterprise:

• Use the standard enterprise type for the main combinable crop
• Include all cultivation, drilling and treatment passes for both the crop and any associated environmental elements

Production:

• Enter main crop income and yields as estimates or actuals
• Include income from environmental elements and straw sales in the designated box

Costs:

• Complete as usual for the combinable crop and any associated environmental elements

Note: Overheads remain under combinables for these enterprises

Areas used exclusively for environmental purposes e.g. fallow or wild bird seed or whole farm options, e.g. hedgerows.

Enterprise:

• Use the new environmental scheme enterprise type
• Either group all environmental areas together or split them as required
• For whole farm options only enter the area as 1 ha

Production:

• Add in any environmental or other income from the enterprise

Costs:

• Add in any environmental crop costs
• Add in overheads with allocations to environmental enterprises

Your multi-enterprise reports will now include environmental scheme enterprises, including establishment costs and income linked to the schemes alongside combinable crop enterprises; this will make it easy to compare financial performance across the different farm enterprises.

Still have questions? Your Farmbench Manager is on hand to assist with any queries.

Getting involved with Farmbench is simple. You can start via the guide to Farmbench or by contacting your Regional Farmbench Manager, who provide 1-to-1 support for data upload, farm visits and optional discussion groups.