CIPM4No use of insecticide on arable crops and permanent crops

What it actually is

A prohibition rather than an operation. GOV.UK's stated aim is that no plant protection products containing insecticide are applied on an arable crop or permanent crop, and the page sets that in the context of an integrated pest management approach, water and air quality, and biodiversity. You keep cropping the field, you keep everything else the same, and nothing containing an insecticide goes on it.

The prohibition covers insecticide seed dressings, nematicides, acaricides, and other insecticides such as silica insecticides and orange oil. Herbicides, fungicides, plant growth regulators and molluscicides such as slug pellets are all still permitted.

Source: GOV.UK, CIPM4 action page, checked 02/08/2026.

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 100 hectares is an illustration.

Is it worth it on your ground?

Most action guides on this site compare the payment against what a three-year rotation would have returned on the same hectares, because those actions take the ground out of production. This one does not work that way. The crop stays, the field is still drilled and still harvested, and the variable costs on it are spent either way. Nothing comes out of the rotation to do this, and there is nothing to buy in.

So the question turns round. Instead of asking what yield makes the payment worth more than the crop, ask how much yield you can afford to lose before the payment stops covering it. Because the variable costs are spent regardless, the grain you might lose is valued at the full grain price rather than at the margin on it, which makes the sum below the cautious version.

Source: the payment rate 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. Feed wheat at £206.00/t, AHDB Arable Market Report, 27/07/2026, East Anglia delivered, November 2026 delivery. Worked as the rate divided by £206.00. The insecticide and application cost you avoid is not included, because that is your own figure.

Where does that sit? Defra puts the UK wheat yield at 7.2 t/ha in 2025. 218 kg is about three per cent of that. So the framing is: if going without insecticide costs you more than roughly three per cent of the crop, the payment has not covered it. On a field you would not have treated anyway, it costs nothing and the saved product and pass are on top.

Source: yield, Defra, Agriculture in the United Kingdom 2025, Chapter 7, checked 31/07/2026. The percentage is arithmetic on that figure and the one above.

The part the sum leaves out.

This paragraph is Tilth's own reading. It is not scheme guidance and it is not sourced from Defra or the RPA.

The threshold above is a flat figure and the risk behind it is not flat. It depends on the crop, the season and the field. A field you have not had to treat is a different proposition from one you treat routinely, and the payment is the same on both. That is a judgement about your own ground and your own pest pressure, and we have not found published data that would answer it for you.

The pairing worth knowing about. CIPM3, companion crop, is listed as compatible with this action on the same area. The two rates then land on the same hectares while the ground is still growing and selling a cash crop, with the companion seed as the only thing to deduct. Both rates are shown at the top of their own guides.

Source: compatibility, GOV.UK CIPM4 and CIPM3 action pages, checked 02/08/2026, where each lists the other as compatible on the same area.

Does it work, and what makes it work better

This section is what we have found in published sources about the practice this action pays for. It is not scheme guidance, it is not Defra's or the RPA's view, and it adds no requirement beyond what the GOV.UK action page sets out. We have named every source and given the date we checked it. What it means for your ground is your decision.

This action pays for an absence, which makes the evidence question two questions rather than one. Does leaving the insecticide off do anything for the aims GOV.UK states, and what does leaving it off cost you in the crop. The second is the one that decides it on most farms, so both are below.

Conservation Evidence, which we use on most of these pages, has to be printed by hand and we do not hold an assessment for this practice, so nothing here comes from them. What we have used instead is AHDB, which is the levy body that funds and publishes the research on this in cereals, and the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust, which holds the longest running invertebrate monitoring on British arable land.

What the wildlife side rests on. The Sussex Study has sampled invertebrates on the same arable fields in the Sussex Downs, at the same time each year, from 1970 to 2019. Fifty years, 32 square kilometres, 4,757 samples and 2.98 million invertebrates. Over that period the total number of invertebrates sampled fell by 37 per cent. Of the taxa studied, 47 per cent declined, 16 per cent increased and 37 per cent showed no change. Predators, parasitoids, fungivores, herbivores and dung-eaters all declined significantly, and four of the five measures of chick-food invertebrate abundance declined significantly, which bears on grey partridge, skylark, corn bunting and yellowhammer. Pollinators showed no detectable change. Aphids themselves fell by 90 per cent.

The authors put agricultural intensification among the main drivers, with the steepest declines in the first decade of the study, 1970 to 1979, when pesticide use and field size were both rising. Insecticide use peaked between the late 1980s and the early 2000s.

Source: Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust, Sussex Study, checked 22/08/2026. Published as Ewald et al. (2024), Insect Conservation and Diversity.

Two things about that study before it gets read as more than it is. It measures what happened on farmland over fifty years, during which a great many things changed at once, so it is evidence that intensification cost the insects rather than evidence about what one insecticide pass on one field does. And the 90 per cent fall in aphids is part of the same picture, which cuts in an awkward direction for anyone using it as an argument.

What the crop side rests on. AHDB put the yield loss from severe barley yellow dwarf virus at up to 60 per cent in winter wheat and up to 50 per cent in winter barley, and say in the same breath that such losses are rare. A separate AHDB project report puts the ceiling higher, at up to 84 per cent in winter wheat and 80 per cent in winter barley. Very early infection can kill plants outright, and AHDB say the impact becomes negligible after growth stage 32.

Set against that, AHDB's own aphid testing found that most aphids do not carry the virus. Across the autumns of 2021 to 2024 the average proportion carrying it did not exceed 30 per cent, and autumn 2025 was the highest they have recorded, at about 35 per cent of bird cherry-oat aphids tested.

And the insecticide may not be doing what the invoice suggests. AHDB report that moderate levels of pyrethroid resistance are already widespread in UK grain aphid populations, carried by the kdr mutation.

Source: AHDB, Barley yellow dwarf virus (BYDV) management in cereals, and AHDB, BYDV prevalence and insecticide resistance status in UK cereal aphids, and AHDB, Management of aphid and BYDV risk in winter cereals, all checked 22/08/2026. The two different ceilings for yield loss come from two different AHDB publications and we have reported both rather than choosing between them.

What the sources say makes it work better. All of the following is AHDB's, and it is a description of what they publish rather than advice from us. None of it is a requirement of this action.

Drilling date first, because AHDB call it possibly the most important BYDV risk factor, and their guidance is to drill as late as you can. That decision sits outside the action entirely and is made before the seed goes in the ground.

Then the variety. AHDB distinguish between resistant varieties, which stop the virus replicating and carry no yield loss, and tolerant ones, which may show symptoms but avoid significant yield loss. They name RGT Wolverine in winter wheat, from 2021/22, and KWS Feeris in winter barley, from 2022/23, as examples.

Then knowing what is actually flying. AHDB point to the Rothamsted Insect Survey for regional aphid activity and publish their own autumn snapshots of how many of the aphids caught are carrying virus. Within a crop, their work found water traps the most effective way of monitoring bird cherry-oat aphid. They also have a decision support tool, ACroBAT, which takes drill date among other variables and which their trials found gave yield benefits where BYDV was present, though they note the virus was low in those trials.

And the predators. AHDB name predatory beetles and web-spinning spiders as helping to control aphids, while saying plainly that this may not prevent the virus being transmitted.

Source: AHDB, Barley yellow dwarf virus (BYDV) management in cereals and Management of aphid and BYDV risk in winter cereals, checked 22/08/2026.

What we have not found. Nothing measuring CIPM4 itself. No published figure for what a season without insecticide costs on an average English arable field, which is the number this page's arithmetic is crying out for. Nothing on the water and air quality part of the action's stated aim that we could check at source. And no study that isolates one insecticide pass from everything else a farm does, which is why the fifty-year monitoring above is the strongest thing we can put behind the biodiversity aim and is still not a measure of this action.

What follows is Tilth's own reading of how those findings sit against this action, and it adds no requirement beyond what the GOV.UK action page sets out.

The most useful thing in all of this is not about wildlife. It is that two of AHDB's own findings point at the same place: most aphids are not carrying the virus, and the pyrethroid may be compromised by resistance anyway. Put together, those say that a proportion of insecticide passes on cereals are buying less than the invoice implies. This action pays you to find out which proportion that is on your own ground, and the sum earlier on this page says the payment covers roughly three per cent of an average wheat yield.

The shape of the risk is what makes it hard rather than the size of it. BYDV is rare and occasionally enormous. A threshold of three per cent of yield is comfortable against a normal year and no comfort at all against the year it lands badly, and no average tells you which year you are in. That asymmetry is the honest reason to be careful with this action even though the arithmetic looks generous.

Which is why the three things AHDB put ahead of spraying matter more on this page than they would on most. Drilling date, variety choice and knowing what is flying are all decisions made before the field is committed, they are all outside the action's requirements, and between them they are what turns a no-insecticide agreement from a gamble into a plan. A field drilled late, in a tolerant variety, watched properly, is a different proposition from the same field drilled early in a susceptible one, and the action pays the same on both.

The last thing is a comparison rather than a finding. The Sussex Study recorded a 37 per cent fall in invertebrates over fifty years and a 90 per cent fall in aphids within it. Whatever else that says, it does not describe a countryside where the pest is winning. We would read it as a reason to check whether the pass is needed rather than as proof that it never is.

What you actually have to do

Do not apply any plant protection product containing insecticide on land entered into the action. GOV.UK includes insecticide seed dressings, nematicides and acaricides, and other insecticides such as silica insecticides and orange oil, in that prohibition. Herbicides, fungicides, plant growth regulators and molluscicides such as slug pellets are permitted.

On arable crops, the action must be done on at least one crop sown during each year of the three-year duration. If there is already a crop in the ground when the action starts, GOV.UK says you must do the action on a crop sown within 12 months of the start date. On permanent crops, the action runs from its start date throughout each of the three years. GOV.UK gives no calendar dates for this action.

Source: GOV.UK, CIPM4 action page, checked 02/08/2026.

What you cannot do on it

No plant protection product containing insecticide, in any form, including as a seed dressing. Nematicides and acaricides are named as included. So are silica insecticides and orange oil.

Source: GOV.UK, CIPM4 action page, checked 02/08/2026.

Where it can go

Agricultural land below the moorland line. On arable land, land used to grow crops, which for this action excludes temporary grassland, fallow land and maize. On permanent crops, horticultural and non-horticultural, excluding miscanthus. On arable land the action is rotational, so it can move in years two and three; on permanent crops it stays in the same place.

SSSIs are eligible, but you must give notice to Natural England to get SSSI consent before the Rural Payments Agency can offer you an SFI26 agreement. Land with historic or archaeological features needs an SFI HEFER before you do the action.

Source: GOV.UK, CIPM4 action page, checked 02/08/2026.

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.

Seed dressings are in the prohibition, and the decision is made before drilling. This is the one to sit with. Everything else about the action happens in the growing crop, but a dressed seed decision is made in the shed or on the order, potentially months before the parcel is even chosen. Read the seed order alongside the action, not after it.

The prohibition is wider than the word suggests. Nematicides and acaricides are named as included, as are silica insecticides and orange oil. A product bought to deal with a mite or an eelworm may not be filed under insecticide when you think about the field, and GOV.UK has put it there.

It needs a cash crop, and it excludes fallow, temporary grassland and maize. This is not an action you can park on ground that is out of production. At least one cash crop must be sown in each of the three years, so the land has to be cropping for the action to be doing anything.

It is easy to agree to and hard to remember. This action has no operation attached: nothing gets sown, built or spread, so there is no doing of it to remind you that the field is in an agreement. The field looks like any other field.

The person who signs the application may not be the person who makes the spray decision. Where an agronomist, a sprayer operator or a contractor makes that call, and makes it at short notice, whether they know which parcels are in CIPM4 becomes the practical question. That is about how the information travels rather than about the action's requirements.

The rate is small enough that the area does the work. On a handful of hectares the payment barely registers. It earns its place across a lot of ground, or on ground where it costs nothing because the crop was not going to be treated.

Keeping the evidence

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

This is an action where the thing you would need to show is an absence, and there is no invoice for a treatment you did not make. The document that speaks to it is the plant protection product record. Kept at parcel level and running across the whole action period, it shows what did go on the field, which is also what shows the insecticide did not.

The seed side deserves its own thought. Since dressings are inside the prohibition, the seed invoice or delivery note showing what the seed was treated with is doing evidential work that a spray record cannot do, and it is a document that lives in a different place from the spray records.

The practical point about both is that this only works if the records are complete and parcel-level. A record with gaps in it does not demonstrate an absence; it demonstrates a gap. That is a reason to keep it properly across the whole farm rather than just on the parcels in the action.

The part only your own ground can answer

Whether this pays comes down to one thing a national figure cannot tell you, which is what your own insecticide passes have actually been buying you, field by field. Your spray records hold that, if they are kept at parcel level and kept for long enough to compare years. Tilth keeps them there, alongside the seed delivery note and a flag on the parcels that are in an agreement. Request an invite.