AHW4Skylark plots

What it actually is

During autumn and winter you create fallow plots inside a winter cereal crop, and you leave them until that crop is harvested. Each plot is at least 3m wide and around 16 square metres, and there is a minimum of two plots per hectare of winter cereal.

Source: GOV.UK, AHW4 action page, checked 31 July 2026.

What it pays, and what that comes to

Two plots a hectare at £11 a plot is £22 per hectare per year.

Here is the number that makes this action unusual. Two plots is 32 square metres, which is 0.32 per cent of a hectare. So the payment works out at £6,875 per hectare of ground actually taken out.

Source: payment rate, plot size and minimum plot count all from the GOV.UK AHW4 action page, checked 31 July 2026. The rest is arithmetic on those figures: 2 × 16 = 32 m²; 32 ÷ 10,000 = 0.32%; £22 ÷ 0.0032 = £6,875.

Is it worth it on your ground?

On the money, the arithmetic is short enough to check in your head, so here it is rather than a verdict.

Source: payment rate and plot dimensions, GOV.UK AHW4 action page, checked 31 July 2026. Yield of 7.8 t/ha is the five-year average UK wheat yield from Defra, Agriculture in the United Kingdom 2025, Chapter 7 (2025 itself was 7.2 t/ha). Feed wheat at £206.00/t, AHDB Arable Market Report, 27 July 2026 (East Anglia delivered, November 2026 delivery).

The same sum at other yields, so you can pick the one nearest your own:

Source: yields as labelled; Defra, Agriculture in the United Kingdom 2025, Chapter 7, and Farm Business Survey, Crop Production in England 2019/20 (a six-year-old figure, included as a high-yield case). Grain price as above. Put your own field's yield in the same sum if you have it.

Two things we have deliberately not done to this sum.

We have not deducted any saving in variable costs. Whether there is one depends on how the plot is handled on your farm. If it gets the same fertiliser and spray passes as the rest of the field, there is nothing to deduct and the £5.14 stands. If you would treat it differently, deduct your own figure. Either way the number above is the full value of the grain rather than the margin on it, so it is the cautious version.

We have not put a number on the cost of making the plots, because it does not consume an input we could price. The real cost is attention at drilling and the risk of getting the count or the position wrong, and that is your own judgement rather than a figure we are going to invent.

Across a farm. Multiply the net figure by your own eligible winter cereal area. On 200 hectares at the minimum two plots a hectare, the five-year-average line comes to £3,372 a year. Note "eligible", not "total": read the land eligibility below before using your whole cereal area.

When the answer is no. The £17 a hectare only exists if the plots go in, in the right places, and stay there until harvest. If drilling is already a scramble and you are not confident that would happen, the sum above is not the sum you would get.

What you actually have to do

Create the fallow plots during autumn and winter, within a winter cereal crop. Retain them until that crop is harvested in the summer. Minimum two plots per hectare, each at least 3m wide and around 16 square metres.

You must not put the plots in tramlines, boundaries or margins. The GOV.UK page gives the reason: those positions increase the risk of predators attacking skylark nests.

Land parcels bounded by tree lines or adjacent to woods must be over 10 hectares to be eligible. The action applies to agricultural land below the moorland line.

Source: GOV.UK, AHW4 action page, checked 31 July 2026.

Things worth watching

This section is Tilth's own reading of where this action is easy to get wrong. It is not scheme guidance, it is not sourced from Defra or the RPA, and none of it adds a requirement beyond what the GOV.UK action page sets out.

Not in the tramlines, even though that is where the drill is easiest to lift. The prohibition on tramlines, boundaries and margins is explicit, and the tramline is also the convenient place, so the rule and the habit point in opposite directions.

Not every cereal field qualifies. Parcels bounded by tree lines or next to woods need to be over 10 hectares. If a fair amount of your cereals sit in small parcels against woodland, your eligible area is smaller than your cereal area, which matters before you multiply anything by your whole acreage.

The shape matters as well as the area. At least 3m wide and around 16 square metres together describe a short, wide patch rather than a narrow slot. Worth checking what a brief lift of your own drill actually leaves on the ground against those two figures.

The count is made at drilling and needed at harvest. The payment is per plot and the minimum is per hectare, so how many went in and which fields they are in has to come from a record made at the time.

They stay fallow until harvest. The requirement is to retain them until the winter cereal crop is harvested, so anything that closes them up in spring undoes the action.

Keeping the evidence

Also Tilth's own reading. GOV.UK sets the requirements; this is a practical suggestion about record keeping.

What you would need to be able to show is how many plots went in, in which fields, and roughly where. The record is made at drilling and wanted after harvest, which is a long gap to hold anything in your head, and a good argument for marking the plots as you drill rather than counting them afterwards.

The bit where we say what Tilth does

Tilth lets you drop a plot marker on the field map as you drill, so the count and the locations are recorded at the moment they exist rather than remembered months later. Request an invite.