New crop and livestock management plan templates

We've recently published new crop and livestock management plan templates. These include species specific livestock management plans and a single crop management plan.

When establishing an enterprise, the Soil Association standards require a description of how it will be managed to organic standards. This can be in the form of a crop or livestock management plan to be completed and submitted to your Certification Officer for approval. Once approved, this plan becomes a working document; when there are changes to your management practices, the plan should be updated and resubmitted for approval, as we'll make verifications against this plan at inspection.

The new crop management plan collects information on the organic fertility building practices, and organic preventative pest and disease measures you have in place. We also ask for information to be provided on any fertility inputs and plant production products used, and the circumstances, thresholds and conditions before using them (only the fertility inputs and plant protection products in 2.5.2 and 2.6.1 of the Soil Association Standards are permitted). This information will be reviewed by your Certification Officer, who'll confirm their acceptability - once approved, this becomes a ‘toolkit’ of products that can be used under the agreed conditions. 

The new livestock management plans ask species specific questions on your management and livestock welfare. Within this plan, we ask for a table to be completed of veterinary medicine products that may be used in agreed circumstances and conditions. We also ask for a table to be completed of feed additives used, such as mineral buckets, permitted under 3.10.14. We can then assess the acceptability of these products and justification for their use. Through completing these sections on veterinary medicine and feed additives, as with the crop management plan, you can then use these products within the agreed conditions, with confidence of their organic acceptability.

We hope these templates will make the process of writing and updating your management plans easier. If you wish, you may submit plans in your own format; however, they must meet the requirements outlined in the templates.

Links to the new templates can be found on the Farming Certification Forms page on our website.

If you have any questions, please contact your Certification Officer.