FarmGate Nutrient Balance Programme

During 2024-2026 we undertook a pilot supporting farmers to undertake whole farm nutrient balance calculations that assess nutrient load on farm. This initiative was considered critical to:

  • Help agriculture take ownership of nutrient excess issues where they exist
  • Quantify what action is taking place on farm to manage nutrient load
  • Identify opportunities to improve business efficiency
  • Enable farmers to make informed decisions relating to nutrient and feed use to avoid excesses in the system,
  • Generate a locally-led independent baseline dataset that helps to quantify real-life nutrient load of farms in the Wye, and
  • Demonstrate industry-wide commitment to sustainable farming.

PLANET’s FarmGate Tool

A number of nutrient balancing tools exist, the simplest at the time was PLANETs FarmGate tool which although out of date as a system enabled farmers and advisers to calculate Total Nutrient Load of the holding and a Load/hectare for the holding by inputting basic farm details:

Data of

Imports
  • Fertiliser or manures
  • Livestock bought onto the holding
  • Feed or bedding

Data of

Exports
  • Manures
  • Livestock sold off the holding
  • Crops and prouct

Nutrient surpluses of any magnitude indicate inefficiencies that as an industry we should seek to improve, this will have both environmental and business benefits.

Findings of the FarmGate Programme

Our FarmGate programme is now the most detailed local dataset of farm nutrient use anywhere in the Wye. Whole-farm nutrient balances were completed for 145 holdings covering around 28,000 hectares — roughly 20% of the farmed area of the English Wye — across a full range of farm sizes and enterprises including dairy, beef, sheep, arable and poultry. The dataset has been independently peer reviewed by Lancaster University.

  • Phosphorus is broadly in balance. Across the farms assessed, the average phosphorus balance is essentially neutral — −1.1 kg P₂O₅/ha (−0.5 kg P/ha) — with roughly seven in ten farms at a zero or negative balance.
  • That is very different to historic modelling. Lancaster’s REPHOKUS modelling had estimated the Wye’s soils were receiving around +6.2 kg P/ha above crop need. Our farm-level data suggests farms are, on average, close to balance — in like-for-like elemental terms, roughly −0.5 vs +6.2 kg P/ha. We think this reflects the real progress being made on farm with nutrient management in recent years.
  • Nitrogen remains a challenge. The dataset shows an average surplus of around +83 kg N/ha — a reminder that we cannot focus on phosphate in isolation and need to consider all the major nutrients when planning on farm.
  • Feed is the dominant driver. Compound livestock feed is the single biggest source of imported phosphorus (around 66%), which makes feed sourcing one of the most powerful levers a farmer has.

Summarised below are the key import and export categories which help to improve understanding of where the dominant sources of nutrient arise on farm, for example Compound livestock feed.

It’s not the cow, it’s the how

One of the clearest conclusions from the dataset is that the number of livestock a farm carries is not the most significant factor influencing its nutrient load — the way the farm is run matters far more. Feed sourcing, forage and grazing management and manure handling shape the balance more than stock numbers alone, so much so that two farms carrying similar numbers of animals can sit at opposite ends of the scale. Put simply, it’s not the cow, it’s the how. That is genuinely encouraging: a healthier nutrient balance is within reach for almost any business through smarter production and management decisions, rather than through cutting stock. 

Independently Peer Reviewed

To make sure the dataset stands up to scrutiny, we commissioned Lancaster University — home of the REPHOKUS research group — to peer review it. Working through their queries, we strengthened the data further: excluding outlier data lines that could not be explained, and updating the phosphorus coefficient for broiler manure to the up to date value provided by the poultry industry, ensuring the significant reduction in the nutrient content of poultry feed achieved over the last five years is captured.

With those refinements agreed, Lancaster considered the dataset generally robust, concluding that the results reflect “an encouraging trend towards adoption of more sustainable farming systems, export of manure from the farm and lower fertiliser use”, and that “the FHP dataset suggests farmers are moving in the right direction in reducing the P input pressure on the river Wye”.

What participating farmers told us

Feedback from participating farmers has been strongly positive: 

  • 91% found the process useful or informative 
  • 90% were satisfied with what they learned
  • 45% had already made changes to their business as a result — from reducing bought-in feed and exporting surplus manure to matching fertiliser more carefully to realistic yields 
  • 90% intend to make further changes
  • 78% recognise that nutrient loss has direct financial consequences for their farm

Hear it in their own words — two farmers share how the FarmGate nutrient balance shaped the decisions they’ve made on farm.

Recommendations from our FarmGate Programme

Industry level

Our recommendations echo the review team’s in one important respect: the industry needs consistent, independently published nutrient figures and coefficients, kept regularly up to date, so that whichever tool a farm or adviser uses is as accurate as it can be. The change we made to the broiler manure coefficient during the review is a case in point — the values built into published tools can quickly fall behind real-world practice. Although up-to-date poultry manure coefficients were locally available, these were absent for other sectors, which means improvements made over the last five years within the beef, lamb and dairy sectors could not be quantified in this dataset.

Farm level

  • Farms across every sector need to be empowered to make informed decisions about the feed they bring onto the holding, so that each enterprise is as efficient as possible.
  • For grazing livestock this is becoming ever more important: changing weather patterns are driving more ad-hoc feed buying to make up for forage shortfalls on farm, which makes understanding the nutrient — and the cost — that comes with every load of feed more valuable than ever.

Over the coming year we’ll be working closely with some of the participating farms to look in much more detail at livestock diet and the true nutritional values of imported feed, the nutrient uptake of forage and arable crops grown on the holding, and the way manure and fertiliser move through the system.

Alongside this we’ll track the numbers that matter to the farm — yields, finishing rates, input costs and margins — to test a simple but important question: can a farm reduce its nutrient surplus without giving up production or profitability? 

Click Here To Read Full FarmGate Report

This programme has been made possible through Herefordshire Rural Hub’s partnership programme with the Environment Agency, whose combined funding and support has enabled the FarmGate nutrient balance work and peer to peer farmer events to share leading practice on soil, water and nutrients. 

Thanks to our partners in Farm Herefordshire, including Wye & Usk Foundation, Herefordshire Meadows, Catchment Sensitive Farming and Herefordshire Council, who supported us in expanding the FarmGate dataset during 2025.