AHW7Enhanced overwinter stubble

Two GOV.UK pages say different things about the scheme

The standalone GOV.UK page for AHW7 sits under "Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) scheme: expanded offer for 2024" and was last updated on 27/03/2025. The GOV.UK SFI26 actions publication lists AHW7, enhanced overwinter stubble, among the farmland wildlife actions for arable and horticultural land, headed "updated for SFI26". The SFI26 scheme rules and guidance also name AHW7 in the list of limited area actions.

Source: scheme heading and last-updated date, GOV.UK AHW7 action page, checked 02/08/2026. AHW7's listing under SFI26, GOV.UK, SFI26 actions, and GOV.UK, SFI26 scheme rules and guidance, section 4.5, both checked 02/08/2026.

What follows is Tilth's own reading of those page details. It is not scheme guidance, it is not sourced from Defra or the RPA, and it adds no requirement beyond what the GOV.UK action pages set out.

If you arrive at the AHW7 action page from a search, the 2024 heading on it can read as though the action has been left behind. The SFI26 documents do not read that way. The practical point is that the action page is where the requirements are set out in full, and the SFI26 documents are where the cap below comes from, so it is worth having both open rather than either one alone.

What it actually is

You take a cereal, oilseed rape or linseed crop off, and then you leave the ground alone. GOV.UK's stated aim is that there is a post-harvest stubble remaining during the autumn, winter, spring and summer months. The page sets that in the context of providing a winter food source for seed-eating farmland birds, and foraging and nesting habitat for farmland birds during the spring and summer months.

The stubble stays until around mid-summer the following year, and you must not apply a pre-harvest desiccant to the crop that produced it.

Source: GOV.UK, AHW7 action page, checked 02/08/2026.

Our own way of putting that, which adds no requirement beyond what the GOV.UK action page sets out: the window runs long enough that the field is out for a full cropping year, and the desiccant rule reaches back into the crop before it.

What it pays, and what that comes to

The rate is in the panel at the top of this page. Multiplied out:

Source: arithmetic on the payment rate shown at the top of this page, which comes from Tilth's copy of the GOV.UK action catalogue and carries its own last-checked date. The 6 hectares is an illustration.

Is it worth it on your ground?

Step one: what it costs to put in. Nothing. There is no seed, no input and no establishment operation, so the payment stands at its full value with nothing deducted from it. That makes this the simplest money question of any action on the site, and the only one where step one is a single word.

Step two: what the ground would otherwise return. Gross margins per hectare for England, non-organic, in the 2023/24 crop year. Variable costs have already been taken off these figures, so there is nothing further to deduct.

Source: Farm Business Survey, Crop Production in England 2023/24, Rural Business Research, England, non-organic, 2023/24 column, checked 02/08/2026. The winter wheat figures come from a sample of 572 farms.

The agreement runs three years, so the comparison has to run three years too, and that ground will not be in wheat for all three of them. Three rotations, worked from the crop figures above:

Source: arithmetic on the crop gross margins in step two, from the Farm Business Survey, Crop Production in England 2023/24, checked 02/08/2026. These three are illustrations. Work your own out from the same crop figures.

Step three: the gap.

Source: the payment rate at the top of this page set against the rotation averages in step two. The remaining figures are subtraction.

Three things to set against those figures. What follows is Tilth's own reading rather than scheme guidance.

The survey reports one winter wheat figure, not first and second wheat separately. A rotation with two wheats in it carries a second wheat at the same gross margin as the first, which is unlikely to be how it turns out on your ground. We have not found a published split to cite, so we have not applied a discount of our own invention. Read the rotation averages as the generous end for the crop.

It is one year, and not a strong one. The same report's 2022/23 column put winter wheat's gross margin at £1,570 a hectare against the £988 above for 2023/24. A three-year decision resting on a single crop year is a shaky thing, and this particular year was the lower of the two.

What you are not spending is not in the table either. A gross margin has the variable costs taken out of it, but it does not have your establishment pass, your autumn fuel or your management time in it. On a stubble there is none of that to spend. Where that lands for you depends on your own costings, and it moves the gap in the action's favour rather than against it.

Where that leaves it. Against a rotation performing at national averages the crop is ahead by something in the region of £175 to £247 a hectare a year, which is the narrowest gap of any action on this site that takes ground out of production. Two things close it further, and neither is a number we can put in the table for you. The first is a field that returns below your own rotation average, which is the usual case for taking ground out. The second is the herbicide exception below, because on heavy ground with a grass weed problem, a year without a crop and a permitted spring graminicide is doing something other than feeding birds. What that is worth depends entirely on what your problem is and what you would otherwise do about it, and we have not found a published figure for it that we would put on a page about money.

What you actually have to do

After harvest, leave the stubble from a cereal crop, oilseed rape or linseed until around mid-summer in the following year. Do not apply pre-harvest desiccants to the crop that produces that stubble. On the stubble itself: no topping, no grazing, no fertilisers, manures or lime, and no pesticides except herbicides to control grass weeds, sprayed on the affected area, from around mid-May.

You also have to identify the land as not being at risk of soil erosion or surface runoff, and keep written evidence that you have.

The window is expressed in seasons rather than dates. If the start date makes it too late in the first year, start within 12 months of the action's start date. In the final year, run until around mid-summer or the end date, whichever comes first.

Source: GOV.UK, AHW7 action page, checked 02/08/2026.

What you cannot do on it

No pre-harvest desiccant on the crop. No topping, no grazing. No fertiliser, manure or lime. No pesticides, with the single exception of herbicides to control grass weeds, sprayed on the affected area, from around mid-May.

GOV.UK's advice section suggests cultivating the stubble area in March to create bare ground nesting plots and encourage spring-germinating rare arable flora. That advice is explicitly not part of the requirements.

Source: GOV.UK, AHW7 action page, checked 02/08/2026.

Our own reading of that, which adds no requirement beyond what the GOV.UK action page sets out: cultivation does not appear in the list of things you must not do, and the advice section suggests it. What the page does not do is state a permission, so read the requirements and the advice together before planning a pass.

Where it can go, and the cap

Agricultural land below the moorland line, on arable land used to grow cereals other than maize or sorghum, oilseed rape or linseed, and identified by you as not being at risk of soil erosion or surface runoff. SSSIs need consent first. Land with historic or archaeological features needs an SFI HEFER first. It is rotational, so it moves within your crop rotation in years two and three. Total or part of a parcel.

Source: GOV.UK, AHW7 action page, checked 02/08/2026.

AHW7 is one of the ten limited area actions under SFI26. The rule is that the total eligible area you enter into them must not be more than 25 per cent of the total agricultural area of your farm. The other nine are CIPM2, CAHL1, CAHL2, CAHL3, CIGL1, CIGL2, WBD3, AHW9 and AHW11.

Source: GOV.UK, SFI26 scheme rules and guidance, section 4.5, checked 02/08/2026.

What you can stack it with

The compatibility lists are on the GOV.UK action page, set out separately for actions on the same area and actions on the rest of the parcel. CIPM4, no use of insecticide, appears on the same-area list. CIPM4 requires the action to be done on at least one crop sown in each of its three years, and its eligible land covers exclude fallow land and temporary grassland.

Source: combinations, GOV.UK AHW7 action page, checked 02/08/2026. CIPM4 sown crop timing requirement and land cover exclusions, GOV.UK CIPM4 action page, checked 02/08/2026.

Our own reading of those two sets of wording, which adds no requirement beyond what either action page sets out: a field left in stubble for the year is not a field growing a sown crop, so the two pages are worth reading side by side before assuming the actions sit on the same hectares in the same year.

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.

The desiccant rule looks backwards in time. The prohibition is on the crop that produces the stubble, not on the stubble. So the decision that determines whether a field can go into this action is made at the end of the previous crop, before the action's ground is even a stubble. It lands with whoever plans the pre-harvest spray rather than with whoever manages the stubble.

"Around mid-May" and "around mid-summer" are the wording, not a paraphrase. GOV.UK gives no calendar dates for this action. That is more room than a fixed date, and it also means there is nothing to point at afterwards except what you actually did and when.

The herbicide exception is narrow in three ways at once. Grass weeds only, sprayed on the affected area only, from around mid-May only. A broadleaf problem in March does not fit any of the three.

Rotational means it moves. Years two and three go somewhere else in the rotation. That is a planning constraint on the whole cropping plan rather than on one field, and it is easier to agree to in the application than to honour in the third year.

The 25 per cent cap is shared, not per action. AHW7 draws on the same limited area allowance as CAHL2, winter bird food, which is the action most likely to be sitting next to it in an arable application. Whatever goes into one is not available to the other, so the two are worth totalling together before the form is filled in rather than decided separately.

The not-at-risk assessment is yours to make and yours to write down. The requirement is that you identify the land as not at risk of soil erosion or surface runoff and keep written evidence of it. That is a document that has to exist, made by you, before the action rather than after.

A full cropping year, not a winter. The word overwinter in the title undersells the length of it. The stubble stands from harvest to around mid-summer the following year, which is why the comparison above is against a cropping year rather than against a cover crop.

Keeping the evidence

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

Two separate records. First, the erosion and runoff assessment, which GOV.UK explicitly says you must keep in writing and which it says can come out of the soil management plan produced for CSAM1 or SAM1. Second, evidence of what you have done, with field operations at parcel level and their invoices, and photographs or other documentation, given as the examples.

Source: GOV.UK, AHW7 action page, checked 02/08/2026.

The awkward thing about showing you have done this action is that it is largely an action of not doing things, and there is no invoice for a pass you did not make. What that suggests to us is that the useful record here is the negative one: a spray and operations record for the parcel that runs across the whole period and shows what went on it, which happens also to be the record that shows the desiccant did not. Dated photographs across the winter and spring are the other half, since a stubble in September and a stubble in June look nothing alike.

The part only your own ground can answer

The gap above is worked on national averages, and the whole case for this action rests on the block being one that returns below your own rotation average. Which block that is, and by how much, sits in your own yield records rather than in a national survey. Tilth keeps them field by field alongside the operations record that shows what did not go on the stubble. Request an invite.