AHW8Whole crop spring cereals and overwinter stubble

What it actually is

Two things joined together. First, a spring cereal grown and taken off as whole crop silage rather than combined, with the grain and the straw removed from the land together. Second, the stubble left behind, standing through the autumn and the winter.

GOV.UK requires you to establish a spring cereal crop, not maize or sorghum, harvest it as whole crop silage, remove the grain and straw from the land, and then leave the stubble over the autumn and winter months. You may undersow a seed mix and you may use a blend of cereals, provided the aim can still reasonably be expected to be achieved.

Source: GOV.UK, AHW8 action page, checked 04/08/2026.

Our own way of putting that, which adds no requirement beyond what the GOV.UK action page sets out: you still take a crop off this field and you are still paid for the ground. That makes the gross margin table on its own the wrong comparison, and this page has to say so before it uses 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 8 hectares is an illustration.

Is it worth it on your ground?

Step one: why this one is not a straight comparison. On the actions that take ground out of production, the payment is set against the crop you gave up and that is the end of it. Here you have not given the crop up. You have changed what it is: a whole crop silage instead of grain and straw sold separately. So the payment is not doing the whole job. It only has to cover the difference between what the silage is worth to you and what the combined crop would have been worth.

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: what the silage has to be worth. The payment plus the silage has to match the rotation. So rather than guess at a silage value, here is the figure it has to clear.

Source: the rotation averages in step two less the payment rate at the top of this page. The figures are subtraction. Establishment and harvest costs are not in them.

The Farm Business Survey publishes gross margins for grain crops sold as grain. It does not give us a value for a spring cereal taken as whole crop silage, and we have not found a published figure we would put on a page about money, so we have not invented one. The table above is the honest form of the question instead: whatever your silage is worth in your clamp or in your buyer's, it has to beat £168 to £240 a hectare for this to hold its own against a grain rotation.

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, which means the thresholds above are the demanding end.

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. In a strong grain year the threshold the silage has to clear goes up sharply.

The costs on both sides of that line are not the same costs. A grain crop is combined, carted, dried and stored. A whole crop silage is mown, carted, clamped or wrapped, and it is a different set of kit and a different set of contractor invoices. The thresholds above are worked on gross margins, which do not carry either. Whether that moves in your favour depends on what kit you have and what you would have to hire.

Where that leaves it. The question this action asks is not really about wildlife payments at all. It is whether you have a use or a buyer for whole crop silage. On a farm with stock, a clamp and a neighbour who buys forage, £168 to £240 a hectare is not a demanding threshold and the payment does most of the work on its own. On an all-arable farm with no clamp, no market within a sensible haulage distance and no wish to acquire either, the crop still has to go somewhere, and no payment fixes that.

What you actually have to do

Establish a spring cereal crop, not maize or sorghum. Harvest the cereal crop as whole crop silage. Remove the grain and straw from the land. After harvest, leave the stubble over the autumn and winter months.

You may undersow a seed mix and you may use a blend or mix of cereals, provided the aim can still reasonably be expected to be achieved.

You must also keep written evidence that land entered into this action is not at risk of soil erosion or surface runoff.

Source: GOV.UK, AHW8 action page, checked 04/08/2026.

What you cannot do on it

Do not apply insecticides to the spring cereal crop after around mid-March, until it is harvested. Do not top or graze the stubble area. Do not apply any fertilisers, manures or lime to the stubble. The only herbicides permitted are those containing amidosulfuron, clodinafop-propargyl, fenoxaprop-P-ethyl, pinoxaden or tri-allate.

Source: GOV.UK, AHW8 action page, checked 04/08/2026.

Our own reading of that, which adds no requirement beyond what the GOV.UK action page sets out: this action has two phases, a crop and then a stubble, and the prohibitions do not all attach to both. Which one each applies to is set out on the action page itself, and it is worth reading that split off GOV.UK rather than out of any summary, including this one.

Where it can go

Arable land used to grow crops, registered as arable land and declared with an arable crop or a leguminous and nitrogen-fixing crop code, along with temporary grassland under TG01 and arable land lying fallow under FA01.

The action is rotational or static, so you can move it for the second and third years or keep it in the same place.

Source: GOV.UK, AHW8 action page, checked 04/08/2026.

AHW8 is not one of the ten limited area actions under SFI26, so it does not draw on the 25 per cent allowance shared by CIPM2, CAHL1, CAHL2, CAHL3, CIGL1, CIGL2, WBD3, AHW7, AHW9 and AHW11.

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

Our own reading of that, which adds no requirement beyond what the SFI26 scheme rules set out: AHW7, the enhanced overwinter stubble action, is capped and this one is not, even though both end in a stubble. If the cap is what is holding back the amount of stubble you can enter, that is worth knowing before deciding they are interchangeable, and they are not, because this one requires a crop grown and cut for forage first.

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 market for the silage is the decision, not the payment. Everything on this page follows from whether the whole crop has somewhere to go. Settle that first, and ideally settle it with somebody who will actually take it, before the ground is committed for three years.

Removing the grain and straw is part of the requirement. Whole crop silage takes the lot off together, which is a different job from combining and baling and leaves you a different stubble. It also means there is no straw crop to sell off this ground, which is worth putting in the sum if straw is normally part of what that field earns.

No insecticide after around mid-March on a spring crop is most of the season. A spring cereal drilled in March and cut for whole crop is under that restriction for essentially its whole life. Look at that against what you would ordinarily do on a spring crop rather than against a winter one.

The herbicide list is five actives and nothing else. Check it against the programme you would ordinarily run before committing ground, not in the spring when a problem has already appeared.

No topping and no grazing on the stubble. On a farm with stock, an autumn stubble is a natural place to put them for a few weeks, and this action rules that out on the ground it covers. That is easy to agree to in an application and easy to forget in a dry October.

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

Rotational or static, and the choice has consequences. If it moves, a spring cereal cut for forage has to be found a home in the cropping plan in each of three years. If it stays, the same ground carries a spring crop and then a bare stubble three years running.

If the parcel is an SSSI, or has historic or archaeological features on it, read the eligible land section of the action page against your own parcels. There are extra steps in that part of the page that do not apply to ordinary arable ground.

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. Second, evidence of what you have actually done.

This action is better served by ordinary paperwork than most of the others on this site, because it generates real documents: a seed invoice, a drilling record, a mowing or contractor invoice for the whole crop, and a movement of forage into a clamp or off the farm. Between them those show a spring cereal established and taken as whole crop silage, which is the half of the action that is hardest to prove after the event. The stubble half is the usual problem of proving a negative, and the answer there is the same as on the other stubble actions: an operations record for the parcel that runs across the autumn and winter and shows what went on it, with dated photographs, since a stubble in September and the same stubble in February look nothing alike.

Tilth keeps the drilling, the harvest and the forage movement against the parcel, and the stubble period against the same parcel afterwards, so the two halves of the action sit on one record.

The part only your own ground can answer

The threshold on this page is £168 to £240 a hectare of value from the whole crop silage, and there is no national figure that tells you whether you clear it. It depends on what your silage is worth where you are, what it costs you to make, and whether that field is one that has been returning below your rotation average anyway, in which case the threshold drops. Tilth keeps the yield history field by field, alongside the operations that produced it, which is where that comparison has to start. Request an invite.