Transcript
Welcome everyone, good afternoon. My name is Will Silby, and I'm an account executive at Land App. I'm delighted to be welcoming you to today's webinar, which I'll be hosting alongside my colleague, Rosie Johnson, who will be helping with the Q&A. This is my second webinar at Land App, so you might not recognize me if you didn't attend the last one about a month ago on Ordnance Survey data. I previously worked for LEAF and started at Land App in September, and I've thoroughly enjoyed speaking with so many of our users and learning about the wide range of cases and sectors using our tool. I'm expecting a diverse audience today as we'll be focusing on regenerative agriculture.
Land App Resources & Updates
If you'd like to watch this webinar back, the recording will be on our YouTube channel. We also have a range of other webinar recordings there on different themes, which are a great resource if you want to see a full workflow from start to finish. For quick tips, we have two-to-three-minute walkthrough videos on things like our Land App Mobile app. Our online help center has plenty of articles and how-to guides, and our live customer support chat in the bottom right of the Land App interface has humans behind it—sometimes even Rosie and myself!
I'd also like to give a couple of quick updates on some events. The National Silver Lapwing Awards, led by LEAF, was a brilliant event on the Isle of Man. Congratulations to Andrew Bot, an arable farmer from Hertfordshire, for winning this year's award for his brilliant work on soil health and habitat creation. It was also the first time the Land App team had a stand at Groundswell, and thank you to anyone in the audience who dropped by. Regenerative agriculture is very fresh in our minds, and what a fantastic event it was. Lastly, we are sponsoring and will have a stand at the Agroforestry Show in Hertfordshire at Woodoaks Farm. If you're attending, please do drop by.
Product Updates
Now, for some product updates. Some are already in the app, and most are coming on Wednesday next week.
Whole Farm Biodiversity Audit Template: This is now available and is applicable to farms in Scotland. It's a requirement from the Scottish government to create this biodiversity audit map or baseline. This template helps you build that baseline with default styling for different habitat types like conifer plantations and rush pasture. You can also copy this template straight into the baseline habitat assessment, just like you can with the BPS template, which helps streamline things and avoid duplication.
Data Layer Transparency: We've added a new ability to adjust the transparency of data layers. You can do this with styling in Land App, but now it's available for data layers as well, which is great for visualizing and layering information.
New Data Layers: Quite a few new data layers are coming next week:
Environmental Stewardship Agreements and Options for England: Similar to the Countryside Stewardship layers, you'll be able to see the live agreements and different options spatially.
Woodland Carbon Code: This data layer identifies the locations of certified projects across the UK that demonstrate verified carbon sequestration. It's also divided into those that are "validated" and those that are "under development."
Peat Map from Natural England: A brilliant new nationwide map showing the extent of peat and peat soils across England.
Overland Flow Pathways: A highly requested feature that identifies the likely routes water takes across the land surface, highlighting areas prone to accumulation, pollution, and soil erosion. It's part of the Environment Agency's alert tool.
BNG Register: In our Professional subscription, different point locations will provide information about sites on the Biodiversity Net Gain register.
Hopefully, all of these updates sound interesting and useful.
Mapping Regenerative Agriculture
I know most of you are familiar with regenerative agriculture, so I won't go into too much detail. At its heart, it's about restoring and enhancing the health of the land, particularly the soil. The aim is to reverse degradation caused by conventional farming practices to ultimately build more resilient, productive ecosystems and farm systems. We need healthy ecosystems for food security.
The five key principles of regenerative agriculture are:
Limiting soil disturbance: Protecting soil structure and microbes by avoiding plowing and using low-till or direct drilling.
Protecting the soil surface with covers: Using living plants or residues to build fertility, prevent erosion, and provide habitats.
Maintaining living roots: Keeping plant roots in the ground for as long as possible to provide a food source for microbes and improve nutrient cycling.
Integrating animals: Using grazing to stimulate plant growth and improve nutrient cycling.
Diversity: Promoting diversity in both crops and ecology.
These five principles are very much interlinked, and practices associated with them will often impact all five at the same time. The practices will also look different on every farm. Land App can help users understand and visualize the context that influences their decisions. It also gives you the ability to simply illustrate different crops, infrastructure, and practices that fall under the lens of regenerative agriculture.
Demo: From Conventional to Regenerative
We'll divide the demo into two parts. First, we'll work through an example baseline farm rotation and use data layers to understand the context. Then, we'll use the RPA import to create a farm rotation baseline and use different drawing features to illustrate a more regenerative farm rotation. You'll notice that the more colorful the map is, the more diverse the system and rotation look.
We'll also dip into Land App Mobile, which is available for Standard and Professional users. You can view all your plans from your desktop on the mobile app, even offline, as it uses GPS. You can take photos in the app or upload geotagged photos from your phone, and they'll be placed exactly where they were taken. You can use this for evidencing and recording different practices. The app also allows for live editing and collaboration, so if someone is editing on the app in the field, you'll see those live updates on your desktop.
The second part of the demo will look at those different data downloads. There's a whole range, but I'll highlight some around wet landscapes, agroforestry, wild edges, and e-planner. These are really helpful for suggesting geospatial areas on your map that could be best suited for different interventions.
I'll now open up my Land App account and start creating a map. I've already created one in preparation for this demo, titled "Regen A Webinar." I'll open it up.
Part 1: The Baseline
First, I'll set up our boundary using the RPA import tool. This is a direct link with the Rural Payments Agency's mapping portal, and you'll need an SBI number to use it. I'll select "Land Covers" and "Hedges" and choose the "Basic Payment Scheme" template. What's happening here is that my SBI number is sent to the RPA portal, which then sends back data on our farm boundary, parcel breakdown, and pre-populated land covers with default styling. We're in Surrey here, and one of our board members, Ed, has kindly shared his SBI number for the demo. I'll click on one of the parcels and you'll see it's populated with the land cover, which is permanent grassland, and includes field ID, parcel ID, and sheet ID, which are important for recording and for dealing with the RPA.
You'll notice it's a pasture-based system. For the purpose of this demo, I'm going to change a few of these parcels to some arable crops and give them new styling. We'll change one to barley. Now, we'll look at the different data layers to add context.
Agricultural Land Classification: We can see that this entire farm is pretty much in Grade 4 land. We probably wouldn't want to be growing crops here, but we will for the demo.
Ancient Woodland: To the south of Ed's farm, we have some ancient and semi-natural woodland, so we'll want to think about protecting that through our practices.
Beelines: Ed's farm is right in the middle of a beeline, which is a network across the UK for key pollinators to migrate. This is important for pollinating crops, so we'll need to consider how to support pollinators through our farming system.
Keeping Rivers Cool: This layer from the Rivers Trust shows areas with water courses that have no shade from riparian buffers within 50 meters. This highlights areas we need to focus on to support the water flow.
Nitrate Vulnerable Zones (NVZs): Ed's farm is right on the edge of the Cranley Waters NVZ. With this information, we'll want to make sure we're building fertility naturally with covers and cover crops, and at least reducing our artificial fertilizer inputs to avoid leaching into water courses.
Demo: Regenerative Practices
That segues nicely into the next couple of steps. We'll now go on that trail of thought of wanting to build fertility in a more regenerative way. I like to map that separately in a different plan. I'll select a few parcels, copy them to a new plan called "Covers," and use the BPS template.
Covers and Intercropping: We can now map the practices we're thinking about. We could try a "living mulch trial," using clover as a low-crawling species to maintain a blanket cover. We could also try "intercropping," growing two different crops at the same time in the same place, like winter wheat and field beans, with the beans helping to build nitrogen. We'll use different styling to illustrate this on our map.
Tillage: For two other fields, we can map out our different drilling practices, like "min-till" or "direct drill," and add attributes like the date they were drilled.
Field Margins: We can also add a buffer to one of our fields, calling it a "margin," to extend the habitat in the marginal areas of the land. This allows us to build a more colorful "covers map" to illustrate the different regenerative practices. We can keep our farm rotation baseline in a separate plan, as the land is still being used for growing crops.
Part 2: Livestock & On-the-Go Mapping
Next, we'll think about livestock. This is predominantly a livestock farm, so we're thinking about how to manage a grazing rotation and what the animals are grazing on. We might want to use herbal leys, which are brilliant, diverse swards full of different plants.
Rotational Grazing: We can create a separate plan called "Grazing Rotation" and use the blank template, which has features like fencing. We'll draw out our fences to divide the fields into smaller paddocks. With capital grants recently being reopened, this is a good idea to plan for in Land App. We can change the styling to dotted lines and assign the attribute "cattle fence." The benefit of rotational grazing is that it gives each area of pasture a break and time to regenerate until the cows are moved back on.
Now, I'll move on to the Land App Mobile app. This is available for all Standard and Professional users. I'll open it up and search for the map we were just working on. It's using GPS to show my current location in Bristol. To view our plan, we need to download it. Once downloaded, we can zoom in and perform simple tasks. For example, I can select a field and use the split tool to divide it. This is useful if you realize in the field that you need to section off an area.
Photo Evidence: If we want to take a photo of a cover crop and assign it to an area on our map, we can use the yellow plus button at the bottom. The app will place the photo exactly where it was taken. You can also upload geotagged photos from your phone retrospectively, so you don't have to be in the field taking photos one by one. This is a great asset for validating and recording different practices.
Demo: Data Downloads
Now, I'll show you a few of those different data downloads that are available in Land App and accessible here. We'll click "New," then "Download Data," and we've got a full list of what I call "hidden gems," most of which are free.
Slope Identifier: This tool, based on Environment Agency LiDAR data, gives us a really interesting map showing different gradients and slopes. Dark red areas are a very high gradient (above 11∘). This can help us understand where different crops are likely to be successful and where water is going to flow, which can help with decisions around things like agroforestry.
Wild Edges: This layer suggests different areas on your map where it would be best to extend habitat, such as hedgerows. It adds a 3-meter-wide area of mixed scrub and another 3-meter-wide area of neutral grassland to improve the marginal areas of land for pollinators.
Vegetation Layer: This layer is from the Environment Agency's vegetation object model and is available in the free version and above. It shows any vegetation (hedgerows and trees) that are above 2.5 meters. It's a nice visual tool that can help you think about different interventions.
E-Planner: This tool from the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology suggests different habitats that are best suited for specific places on your map, helping with decisions. It has options for bird seed, wet grass, woodland, water resources, and pollinators. For example, by turning on the pollinators layer, we can see that our arable fields are suggested as key areas for pollinators, which reinforces the importance of using flower-rich margins.
Wet Landscapes: This tool uses Environment Agency data to show areas at high risk of annual flooding. It also shows areas where possible interventions could be placed to mitigate the negative impacts of flooding, suggesting things like leaky dams, agroforestry, and riparian buffer strips.
Agroforestry Tool: This tool helps you create an agroforestry design. We'll select one field, choose a "dispersed" design, and set the parameters like a 10-meter headland and a density of 40 trees. Once it runs, it will give us a nice agroforestry design on our map, avoiding existing vegetation and roads.