Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining today's webinar on the SFI 23, the Sustainable Farm Incentive. I'm Dan from the Land App, and I'll be spending the next hour discussing how the Land App can assist you in planning for the SFI application. For those who haven't met me, I'm the head of growth here at Land App, overseeing product development, marketing, and sales. We have a growing team ready to assist you through the process if needed.

Our objective today is to demonstrate best practices for completing an SFI application. As usual, this is a webinar, which means your camera will remain off, and your microphone will be muted throughout the call. However, we encourage engagement using the Zoom Q&A function at the bottom of your screen. Additionally, we've enabled the voting system, so if there's a particular question you'd like answered, feel free to vote it up. In case we can't cover all questions during the session, any unanswered ones will be addressed via follow-up email.

At the end of the webinar, I'll stay for an extra five minutes for any unmuted discussions. The session is being recorded and will be available on our YouTube channel next week. On our channel, you'll find other resources that might be helpful. Furthermore, we'll have a brief survey at the end to gather your feedback, aiding us in shaping future webinars and Land App development.

Today's agenda spans an hour: a five-minute Land App overview and updates for SFI 23, a 30-minute demo on building an SFI plan using Land App, five minutes on utilizing Land App mobile for collecting photo evidence (for standard and professional subscribers), a brief touch on SFI Moorland partnership with the Foundation for Common Land, and approximately 10 minutes for Q&A, aiming to conclude by 1:00.

You can find us on YouTube at Land App, where we've compiled a list of past webinars and training resources. If you want to explore the software's capabilities further, I recommend visiting our channel.

Regarding SFI, Sustainable Farm Incentive 23 was released a couple of months ago. It differs from SFI 22 and the SFI pilot, as they are completely different schemes. SFI 23 is available to all farmers in England, unlike the earlier bespoke schemes for specific individuals. It's more likely that you're eligible for SFI 23, but please check which template suits your application best. SFI 23 has released 23 actions in 2023, focused on enhancing sustainability on farms.

We've released a template and categorized it following the structure from the Rural Payments Agency. There are different actions you could apply across soil health, moorland, hedge RS, integrated pest management, nutrient management, farm wildlife, buffer strips, and low-input grasslands. Just to note, Land App is a tool; we're not an advisory body. While we hope our tool helps with your decisions, we cannot provide advice. If you need help building an SFI application, seek advice from a professional. Also, always check the official guidance. In a moment, during the demo, we've made it easy for you to access that guidance directly as you draw shapes on the map.

Moving on to the live demo on how to use the Land App to build your SFI application. For newcomers, the Land App is an online mapping platform found at thelandapp.com. You don't need to download anything onto your computer to access it; you can access it through a web browser. I recommend visiting our website to understand our functions, pricing tiers, and case studies—all shown today except the mobile app, available on the free software. Our core principle is not to charge users going through the system; subscription tiers offer additional functionality for teams, business IP, etc. Also, all data created on Land App belongs to you, following our user terms; you decide who to share it with, held within a private secure server if not shared.

For those without an account, sign up for free by hitting the "sign up" button and follow the steps. I'll log in now by hitting the login button, taking me to the Land App. Once logged in, you'll see your Maps page, each representing a different holding or area I've worked on during demos. Maps on this tab are created by you or your team if you're on a subscription. Click the "shared with me" button to see maps others have invited you to collaborate on externally. If you're invited to a map, check the "shared with me" section before worrying about where the map is located.

For the demo, I'm going to create a new map. I'll give it a team tag, "team farming in ecology SFI demo November 23." By creating an empty map, I'm automatically dropped onto my interactive base map. As usual, these interactive base maps can be changed. We have various free base maps available, such as aerial imagery, which is interactive, allowing you to scroll around the country. Additionally, there are premium data sets like Ordinance Survey data that people can purchase or access through OS partnerships.

The first step in building an SFI application is to import your field parcel data from the Rural Payments Agency. You can do this by hitting the "new" button, then "import data," and choosing "import from rural payments." This feature only works for farms in England, fitting the SFI application scope. You'll need to input your nine-digit single business identifier number. For SFI, I suggest importing land covers and hedges. Land covers represent the fields, segmented into various habitat types or land uses, while land parcels denote individual features per parcel, including field IDs and hedge locations, based on RPA data. Always cross-check and submit an R1 form for any necessary alterations.

The next step involves choosing the template for data integration. We have templates formalizing workflow, including SFI 2022 and SFI 2023. Although today's focus is on SFI 2023, for best practice, I recommend starting with the basic payment scheme. It provides a clean backdrop, colouring your map according to the RPA's current land cover data. Importing the basic payment scheme with the SBI number initiates the extraction of land cover data styled based on RPA codes. This allows interaction with the land cover plan by clicking shapes and viewing RPA-assigned field boundaries.

The demo farm primarily consists of grassland (lighter green) and woodland blocks (darker greens), with unassigned areas likely representing arable land or rotation zones. To categorize arable land, simply select the parcels, assign them an arable land code—let's say "permanent crops"—using the "change" button. This update not only changes the colour but also adjusts attributes in the right-hand panel, aiding in code identification during the demo.

So now what I've got is a pretty detailed land cover map that allows me to start considering SF and the different SFI options. The other thing to show you is that I've also downloaded the hedge cover data, which is where the RPA Hedges are currently based. That's come down as a separate layer, so these can be iterative by either turning them on and off by clicking this little "i" icon, or you can have them overlaid as well. Just bear in mind, while you're mapping on Land App and you've clicked on a shape on the left-hand side, we highlight in yellow which layer you're interacting with.

If I click on a hedgerow, you can see the hedgerow has gone yellow. If I click on a parcel, the land covers go yellow, and that just hopefully gives you a vision of which ones you're editing. More plans are starting to appear on that left-hand side, so now I've got a land cover map, and that now gives me an understanding of at least the context of my fields, my client's fields. I now want to move that data into that SFI template. I'm going to move it into the sustainable Farm Incentive template, and the way that I do that is either by clicking the three dots and hitting duplicate, and that will then ask you to choose which template you want to choose, which in this case is the SFI 2023 at the bottom of that list. I can give it a name, SFI 23 actions like so: remove land covers, create plan. And what that's now done for me is it's now brought over those field parcels. As a note, you can do that exact same process by hitting new, use template SFI 23, and then choosing from an existing plan. So that's another way you can do exactly what I've just done. I think it requires two more clicks, and hence why I went for the slightly quicker one, but you can then do exactly the same and translate it to land covers as well, uh, to SFI, sorry.

So what I've now got on my map is I've got three layers; all of them are currently turned on and in view. If I want to hide them, clicking the "i" icon, you can see that all of these polygons now, or all of these field paths within my SFI actions plan, have currently got no attributes. In other words, there's no SFI action associated with them.

When building an SFI plan, the first thing I would recommend is to start thinking about those whole-field actions that you want to apply to those field parcels. When I say whole-field, that could encompass various aspects like grassland management, soil surveys, etc. Let me demonstrate that workflow to begin with. The reason I've saved the land covers is as a top tip—when this feature is turned on, it's now behind my SFI plan. This means that even while I'm editing the SFI actions, I can visually see through the map which fields are woodland and which are grassland. You might already know this by heart, but having that background view ensures you're applying the right code to the right field. Eagle-eyed viewers would also notice that when I click on this polygon, it tells me the description on the right-hand side. So always double-check: Is my land eligible for that particular action based on its land cover type?

The first thing I might want to do is apply some grass options. The way we've structured this is exactly the same as the basic payment template or anyone familiar with countryside stewardship. You can click on a field parcel, hit the change button, and get a full drop-down list of all 23 actions. As mentioned on that slide, we've categorized them into Farm Wildlife, arable, for example, with a list of those three codes relevant to that farm action. Farm Wildlife on improved grassland offers different actions to improve Farm Wildlife, but the ones I'm looking for in this particular field are the actions for low-input grassland. These are field-level actions that I, as an applicant to SFI based on my grassland farm, would like to apply to some or all of my grass fields. You can do that one by one, as I've done—click on a field and then choose the one that's relevant to you. This particular field is outside a severely disadvantaged area, but do check whether you're in the SDA or not. So, I can click on that, and what that's now done is assigned a colour to that particular field. That specific field has been given the code "lig1," which is managed grassland with very low inputs.

When you apply that, a couple of things happen in our new SFI template. The first thing is, it automatically tells you the payment rate. The payment rate is the amount per hectare you receive annually from the government for that specific action. Then, we've also calculated the value of that action on your behalf, which is just the payment rate multiplied by the hectare. This value is dynamic, meaning if you want to exclude part of the field for whatever reason (using our split tool, perhaps to remove a corner), it recalculates the new value. So, the value changes to 88.32 from the initial 49.05.

And you can visualize that dynamically. For instance, extending the corners alters the value as well. The crucial function I want you all to be aware of, however, is the undo button at the top left. You can use it to revert any previous actions. The worst thing you can do if you think you've made a mistake in building your plan is to refresh or close the screen. Always consider using the undo button. Just a note, we only save the undo button for the current session. As soon as you leave the map and return, you can't undo any further. So, don't panic or refresh—use the undo button.

To reiterate, turn on my land covers so I can see the parcels. Click on that, hit the change, find the grassland option (lg1 in this case), or use a faster method. You can hold shift and select multiple parcels to bulk change. Another quicker way is using your land covers as a template to select all the grasslands. Right-click on one, select feature type, and then copy them to a plan. This method duplicates the grasslands into a new plan. What I've done is copied over all the grassland features, which I can then change en masse to my desired action.

Now, there are other options to be aware of, for example, in arable blocks. Actions such as herbal leys, winter cover crops, or soil tests across the farm are available.

So, when you're constructing an SFI plan, it's crucial to check the guidance and determine the combination of actions you aim to establish. Remember, when assigning an action below the payment rate, we've added an extra feature: a guidance document. For this specific action, such as herbal lays, akin to the Countryside Stewardship, we've included a direct hyperlink to the government website. This link takes you to the specific webpage displaying guidance on actions for soils. When searching for herbal lays, being on the right page allows easy access to all the different guidance—payment details, eligible areas, and exclusions. Always check as you're designing your plan or exploring options that might be relevant. Draw a shape on the map or assign a code to a shape, then directly jump into the different scheme guidance.

Regarding the whole field options, there's a variety to choose from. While I won't build the entire plan, you can swiftly allocate different layers. Within the SFI, there are options that cover part of a field, meaning not the entire field is eligible for that specific action. Let's continue working on this actions layer and select a random field. There's an action in the guidance to take a small corner of grassland out of management—reduce grazing and cutting regimes. You can use our split tool to chop off this random corner. To access this tool, right-click or hit the right button on your mouse, choose split, and then proceed to delineate the area you want to alter. Double-click to finish the split, and now you can allocate part of the field to a particular action, like IG L1 in this case.

Another type of part field option is a buffer. Let's imagine this area is arable despite the land cover indicating grassland. They've introduced a buffer for grassland, so we've got buffering capabilities within Land App. Using the buffer tool, you can define a margin around the complete circumference of the field. You can select side one for the external edge or side two for the interior edge. I'm opting for side two and putting a 12-meter buffer. Before finalizing the buffer, there are two additional tools: rounded corners, which tidies up the shape, and subtract, which removes the total area of the buffer from the rest of the field, avoiding overlapping features.

I won't hit subtract now; I'll just demonstrate what that does in a moment. When I hit "okay," I've committed to that buffer. So, now I've got a shape that's 12 meters wide, with this tidy corner, to which I can assign the buffer code. They've introduced a grass buffer strip on improved grassland. I've got a 4 to 12-meter border around my improved grassland, totalling 0.8 hectares.

One thing to remember: if that option can't be collocated (and do check the guidance, I'm unsure particularly about that), I need to consider that subtract tool. At the moment, this entire field with the red halo around the outside is 2.65 hectares. However, if I go back to the buffer tool, clicking on it and then selecting the subtract tool, that 0.8 will be subtracted from the 2.65, making it 1.85. Those parcels won't overlap, ensuring consistency within my mapping. So, if this option can't be collocated, ensure I subtract that area, like the management of that corner. Then, this part of the field can be edited and allocated to something else.

Let's look at low input grassland and manage it for low inputs, for example. Now I've got two options within the field; however, the field parcel number, payment rates, etc., have been dynamically calculated for that particular field.

Not always do you want to create a buffer around the entire field; there are times when you might just want to create a buffer or extract one side of the field. To do that, first draw a line that represents the buffer. For instance, I'll draw a grass buffer along the top of this field. Click on the shape, hit "draw," choose "line," and then indicate where you want that line to start and finish.

By default, Land App has this "snap to line" function, which you can turn off if needed. Once the line is drawn, use the same buffer tool to add a buffer to the line. Side one and two represent left and right, so you have to do a bit of trial and error to figure out which is which. Once the buffer is created, apply the code you want.

That covers drawing whole field and part field options. If you need further clarity, you can refer to the Help Centre through the button at the bottom right, where you can search for guidance using the search icon. For example, if you type the word "buffer," you'll find guidance on creating a complete or partial buffer with a helpful video recapping the process.

Now, the next things on your SFI application that you'll want to include are different management options for boundaries, for example, those not reliant on polygons like the area payments, but rather on linear payments, such as the management of hedges.

To show you a quick way of getting hedge rows into your SFI plan: Firstly, turn off the actions and turn on your hedge row layer. Now, if I'm going to choose which existing hedge rows I want to put into management, I can use this data and copy it directly onto my action plan. Let's say I want this one and this one—I'm going to take that one, and by the way, when doing this, holding Shift allows you to multi-select. I've chosen those four hedgerow blocks. I can now right-click on those four hedgerow blocks and hit 'copy to plan.' I bring that over to my SFI action plan. When I turn the action plan on, by default, they will be selected. I've got five fields selected, hit 'change,' and I can start assigning them to the relevant hedgerow code. The code I'm looking at is 'management,' but there are other codes in there, such as 'assess and record hedgerow condition' and 'maintain or establish hedgerow trees.' For this, I want to manage the hedge rows. The field IDs and Sheet IDs, because I've copied them over from the previous map, should be retained. So, I've still got, sorry, this one, I've still got the field ID relevant to those H rows as well. I haven't had to allocate them to a particular field. You may, however, want to draw a new line, i.e., draw a line for a new hedgerow that you want to plant. You can do that easily, but what you do need to do is tell Land App, before you start drawing it, which field parcel it's relevant for, and you can do that by clicking on the field first before you draw.

So, let's just say, hypothetically, I wanted to plant a new hedge row to the southwest of this field. I select this field parcel, I hit 'draw,' I then choose 'line,' and just like when I did that buffer, I can click once, go all the way to the end to here, double-click to finish, and then hit the 'Finish' button. I've now got a nice line that I can assign to 'maintain or establish hedgerow trees.' Okay, so I've now used both the existing RPA hedge data and drawn my own hedgerow data. As a note, if you're trying to do a line that you don't want to snap to the edge, it's this little button here called 'Snap.' Once it's yellow, it's toggled on. If you turn it off and it goes white, when I go to draw a field, the line is not snapping to the line. So, you can be a bit more bespoke, but I would question whether snapping to the line might make it easier or neater.

Especially with hedge rows, best practice for mapping when you've got two options going down the same length, like managing hedge rows but also wanting to maintain or establish hedgerow trees along the same area, what I would recommend doing is two things: firstly, do the same process I've just done. For instance, I've got this block which I'm doing, manage HED RS. I would then use our duplicate function, which will duplicate everything about that feature, including the field numbers, the length, and the shape, and it will drop it directly on top of the hedge row. Visually, you can't see it at the moment, but if I move across to this move button here, I can click and drag that duplicated hedge and move it out illustratively to show where that particular action is going to go.

So, let's say I've got manage hedgerow in purple, and then I want to maintain or establish hedgerow trees there. The lengths are identical, the shapes are identical, but just for illustrative purposes, I've made it slightly further away. This helps when you go to print the map or when you want to export it. You've got all the right details there; you haven't lost any of the information. Remember, as part of this process, the SFI application does not require you to submit this map; it just requires you to upload the sheet numbers, the field ID, and the total hectarage and length of all the options or actions you're applying for. The principle of drawing Capital items is the same for Point features, but let me just double-check, and there are no point features at the moment. You're only dealing with polygons and lines. Apologies, I thought there was one; I've now drawn existing features, whole field options, and obviously, the linear features as well. Once you've completed your action plan and whizzed around the farm and allocated all of your whole field options, etc., I then—I'm just going to give this random code of winter bird food—I've then got some shapes on a map that show the location of my options. What you may want to do is work out the total hectarage of each of the options or the total payment rate that I'm going to get for all these options.

I'd like to point you to the reports button at the top right where you can generate a report based on any of the plans you've created. In this case, I want to add a plan and choose my SFI actions. What that will do is, if you click on this line, it will give you a breakdown for your entire farm—total hectarage of the farm and the total hectarage or length of each of those options you've applied for. The count is just the number of unique features in that area, and the table is fairly self-explanatory.

Now, for your SFI application, this isn't enough information because you also need a breakdown of which field parcels—so which sheet ID and parcel ID—those options fit within. You can find that by hitting this little table view button, which loads up the page like this. Instead of it being an aggregation, it's a row-by-row breakdown of which field parcel has which action, total hectarage of the area, and the total value. For our subscribers, that can be downloaded; you need to be on a subscription service to download it. But you can at least access this data on the free product.

As a note, we've got a story at the moment to introduce a total value at the top of this table. That's one of the biggest requests we've had for a while, just introducing a total summary of the area, the value, and any other numeric things in other templates as well.

The final thing I want to show you before I come back to the slides is around best practice. I sense, although I haven't looked at the Q&A yet, there are quite a few options that do overlap in SFI. What I would recommend is creating two templates where one of them looks at those field-level actions—soil sampling, low input grassland management, for example. Create one layer called 'actions,' and on top of that, create a separate layer, as I've done, which shows the more detailed subfield actions, labelled as supplements.

Language-wise, they're all actions with the RPA, but at least on that map, you can have your HED R options, margins, and field corners as a separate layer. This means you can toggle them on and off. If I swap the order of these, we're nearly in that position, I think, for this demo. So, you've basically got two layers: one showing the complete extent of all the field parcels, and on top of it are those additional actions you're putting in as well. That should allow you to extract as much detail as you need and make the maps as clear as they can be.

Okay, I'm just going to check my list. You don't need to print; just other quick things to make you aware of in the last two minutes: You can measure things as well. We've got a measuring tool within the software here, this little ruler, where if you need to measure the distance or length of a hedge, for example, or an area without drawing the feature, you can use those different systems.

We've got a download button, so if you want to export your plan and share it with someone using another bit of software, you can. But our preferred way, and we think the most interactive way of using the Land App, is adding collaborators to your map. I could, for example, add Kathy at the land app dot com to my map and give her either read-only or edit permission. That will automatically drop her a notification on her system.

That's a quick breakdown of the SFI process—building a plan, appraising the plan. There are lots of relevant data layers. We've got topography data layers, flood zone data layers, and designation data layers. So, do have a look at those. If there are any missing data layers for whatever reason, let us know. Drop us a message because we are soon going to be bolstering our data library due to quite a few data layers coming out, particularly regarding the SFI. The moorland line, for example, is one that we're keen to get in.

You don't need to print, so I won't talk about the print function. Hopefully, that gives you, from a Land App perspective, insight into how you can build your plan, interact, and mold that scheme. It can be dynamic; you don't need to commit to anything, but you can use it to look up the guidance and build that export for your submission to the SFI scheme.

In the last 20 minutes, I want to quickly mention that we've got a Land App mobile out. Land App Mobile is available only to our standard and professional users within a subscription. It's in its first iteration at the moment, not all bells and whistles yet, but you can use it for infield measurements—measuring the length and area of certain areas. You can also log photos in the field, which is a very useful tool for evidencing SFI or Countryside Stewardship. You can both take and label photos. As a note, we're finalizing a release, I think in the next two weeks, for bulk export of those photos for your application.

Also, with the mobile app, you can locate yourself, get GPS positioning, including latitude, longitude, What3words, and an OS grid reference. This allows you to articulate to your team the location of things and where you're planning to do things. Finally, we've received feedback that the satellite imagery in the mobile app is slightly higher res than the Land App desktop. This is because we're using Google Earth in the mobile app. We're in discussions about additional satellite providers on top of our existing Bing imagery and Mapbox. Google is a contender, along with some others.

As part of the SFI, there's an action for SFI Moorland for those within that Moorland line. We've partnered with the Foundation for Common Land to test a mobile app version two that allows you to survey in the field for your SFI application. We've built an official SFI Moorland template enabling you to locate points pre-populated by the service, navigate to those points, and edit a survey form relevant to that point. It also includes progress tracking. This is a managed service in partnership with them. If interested, please message Tom at sfi@foundationforcommonland.org.uk. They'll support you through the process, help you with points, training, and ultimately get outputs, like the ones on the map, showing the location of different actions and where there might be an opportunity to improve.

The SFI Moorland is primarily about assessment, with no requirement to do anything further. If you're within Moorland, it's a very generous offer, especially for slightly larger landowners. Done efficiently, the payment rate can be quite lucrative and worthwhile. I'd message Tom if I were you, to test the new mobile app and potentially benefit financially while gathering good data on your Moorland.