Good Management Practices for Preserving Soil Structure and Quality

How you can do this:

• Consider soil conditions and crop rotation.
• Minimise soil tillage as much as practicable.
• Minimise fallow periods between crops.
• Incorporate crop residues where possible.

Paddock selection 

• Assess the suitability of each paddock for cultivation and avoid high-risk cultivation activities. Considerations include:
  • Soil type and condition,
  • Slope and erosion risk,
  • Proximity to waterways,
  • Weather patterns and forecasts, and
  • Cultivation methods, sowing and harvest dates.

General management 

• Plan crop rotations to enable timely re-sowing and minimise bare cover time after the high-risk winter period.
• Use catch and cover crops (e.g., green feed, oats, mustard) to reduce contaminant loss, enhance soil structure, and increase soil organic matter.
• Retain permanent vegetation cover in gullies, waterways, steep hills, and higher country to regulate water runoff, reduce soil movement, and provide filter areas before water enters streams.

Manaaki Whenua Landcare Research have produced this self-explanatory field guide containing all the information necessary to carry out VSA on your land.

Soil management

• Assess soil structure every three years using a Visual Soil Assessment (VSA) Guide  or an equivalent method.
• Loosen up compacted soils through deep ripping or aeration.
• Avoid cultivation when soil moisture is at or beyond field capacity.
• Use no or minimal tillage techniques where possible, such as direct drilling, strip tillage, or non-invasive tillage.

You can show you meet this GMP with:

• Develop and document cropping/pasture renewal policies and procedures.
• Record sowing and grazing dates in the farm diary along with time-stamped photographs. 

How you can do this:

• All erosion-susceptible areas are mapped and have a Soil Erosion Control Plan actively being undertaken.
• Retire or actively manage erosion prone land to minimise soil losses. 
• Plant areas to protect from erosion, if practical.

You can show you meet this GMP with:

• An Erosion Susceptibility Map (i.e. Productive Land Use (PLC)* map) of your farm.
• Record retired, fenced, and planted erosion-risk areas on your farm map.
• Photographs and field observations of erosion control actions being implemented.

* Productive Land Classification (PLC) is the Council's framework for evaluating land productivity. It aligns with the National Policy Statement for Highly Productive Land (NPS-HPL) which uses the Land Use Capability (LUC) system to define highly productive land. A PLC mapping layer will be available for the Freshwater Farm Plan rollout. For immediate access, please contact the Council's Soils Team:  [email protected].

How you can do this:

• Conduct a risk assessment and choose low-risk paddocks for intensive grazing that are ideally:
  • Away from waterways and ephemeral flow paths that flow during high rainfall, if possible.
  • Flatter with minimal gullies and swales (less than 10° slope).
  • Not prone to pugging, compaction, or erosion; and
  • Free from significant artificial drainage like mole and tile drains.
• Have an Adverse Weather Event Plan that considers environmental risk management, including minimising the risk of pugging, alongside animal welfare implications.

You can show you meet this GMP with:

• A Winter Grazing Management Plan that includes:
  • Mitigations required for each paddock.
  • Grazing management procedures.
  • Managing grazing through extreme weather events.
• Documented farm-specific operating procedures and their implementation.
• Time-stamped photographs and field observations of grazing and cropping management actions. 

Where can I find out more?

Head over to our  Winter Grazing  page, where we have provided a run-down of the National Intensive Winter Grazing rules, what they mean for your farm, and Good Management Practices for all wintering systems - whether you're using a crop–pasture mix, strip‑grazing pasture, or feeding supplements.  There, you’ll find links to Government and Industry Organisations templates for paddock risk assessments and for creating your own Winter Grazing  Plan. There is also industry guidance on these management practices and options to manage pugging, groundcovers, and Critical Source Areas.

How you can do this:

Deer Farming

• Where possible, shift deer to dry, sheltered areas before wet weather arrives.

Dairy

• If paddocks adjacent to waterways or containing CSAs must be grazed during wet periods, establish a fenced buffer strip along these areas.
• Offer more feed in cold conditions when energy demand is high.
• When break-feeding:
  • Graze towards CSA’s and waterways to provide a maximum buffer for the longest possible time.
  • Move break fences daily rather than offering a few days' feed at a time.
  • Back-fence land that has already been grazed and provide water via portable troughs.
• For crops:
  • Offer long, narrow breaks rather than wide breaks.
  • Sow crops across slopes (along the contour) rather than up and down, where practical, to reduce runoff.
     

You can show you meet this GMP with:

• A grazing policy that includes a Winter Grazing Management Plan and wet weather management policies.
• Evidence of management actions such as crop or livestock diaries or time-stamped photographs.