SOH1No-till farming

What it actually is

You sow all your seed without inverting or cultivating the soil. Sowing is with a no-till direct drill, tine, disc or precision seed drills count, including drills with rearward-facing harrow tines, or with broadcasting equipment. What is ruled out is using conventional cultivation or shallow min-till machinery to prepare land, or between harvest and sowing, and one piece of kit is written out of that ban, a stubble rake or a straw harrow whose tines face rearward. Two further exceptions are allowed for the things no-till farms still sometimes need underneath the surface: low disturbance subsoiling to deal with compaction, and mole draining, neither on land with historic or archaeological features.

The action is static: the land you enter stays in the action, in the same place, for the whole three years.

GOV.UK's stated aim is no-tillage techniques that minimise soil disturbance, improving soil health, fertility, structure and water storage, reducing runoff, and supporting carbon, water quality and biodiversity.

Source: GOV.UK, SOH1 action page, checked 24/08/2026. SOH1 continues in the SFI 2026 offer. The Andersons Centre's summary of the 2026 offer lists SOH2 and SOH4 as removed, leaving SOH1 alongside CSAM2, CSAM3 and SOH3 in the soil health group; The Andersons Centre, SFI and CS summary factsheet, March 2026, checked 23/08/2026.

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?

This is the wrong question for this action, and it is worth saying why. The payment is one of the smallest per hectare on this site, and nobody sensibly changes their whole establishment system for it. The real money in no-till, for and against, is in the system itself, and the payment is a top-up for farms whose ground the system suits. So the honest sum has three parts.

What the passes cost now. At NAAC contractor rates for 2026 to 2027, a plough-based establishment, ploughing at £80.02 to £87.82 a hectare, pressing, power harrowing at £71.41 to £81.87, a conventional drill at £67.11 and a roll at £35.19, stacks up to something in the region of £260 to £290 a hectare. A min-till pass with a one-pass tillage train at £83.66 plus drill and roll comes to around £185. Direct drilling at £77.69 plus a roll is around £113. Those gaps, £70 to £175 a hectare each establishment, are where no-till earns or fails, and they dwarf the payment.

Source: NAAC contractor price survey 2026 to 2027, published by Farmers Weekly, checked 23/08/2026. Averages of member responses; with your own kit the saving is diesel, metal and hours rather than contractor rates, and it is your own figure.

What the table leaves out. A no-till drill is serious capital if you do not own one, and hiring or sharing one changes the sum. Establishment without cultivation leans harder on the sprayer, and on many farms on slug control, both of which have prices. Yields through a transition are their own question, which the evidence section below is honest about. None of those numbers are ours to invent, and all of them are already in your own accounts if you have been weighing this system up.

Who the payment actually serves. For a farm already direct drilling, this is the rate at the top of the page for carrying on, and the only question is whether the static rule and the record keeping suit you. For a farm contemplating the switch, the payment tips no scales on its own; read the next section first.

This reasoning is Tilth's own and adds no requirement beyond what the GOV.UK action page sets out.

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.

The geography note first, as on the cover crop pages: all five assessments below sit in Conservation Evidence's Mediterranean Farmland synopsis, built on studies from Spain and Italy above all, with the USA, Portugal, Syria and Lebanon behind them, in dry-summer climates. Nothing in them is British. Tillage is tillage anywhere, but soils, rainfall and the weeds in question are not, so carry everything below with that in mind. There is also a water assessment of no tillage on their site which we have not read at source, so it is not summarised here.

The graded assessments, and the shape they make together. Conservation Evidence, based at the Department of Zoology at the University of Cambridge, summarises the published studies behind individual conservation actions and has independent subject experts score each one. Effectiveness scores only the size and direction of the reported effects, and they say themselves it does not consider the quantity or quality of the studies. Certainty is the separate score for how many studies there are, how well built they are and how much ground they cover.

Source: Conservation Evidence, actions 1369, 1371, 1370, 1355 and 1397, Mediterranean Farmland synopsis, all checked 23/08/2026. Cite as Shackelford et al. (2017), Sustainable Agriculture in California and Mediterranean Climates, University of Cambridge.

Read the top three rows together, because they are the most useful thing on this page and they cut against the action's design. Dropping tillage helps the soil, whether you drop it partly or entirely: both soil assessments come out on the beneficial side. But the panel scored reduced tillage a category above no tillage, and when the two were compared head to head, going from reduced tillage all the way to none came out Unlikely to be beneficial, their judgement that the last step, the one this action requires and min-till farms are excluded for not taking, is the step with the least evidence behind it.

What the studies found for the soil. Under no tillage against conventional: a meta-analysis and fourteen replicated studies found more organic matter in some or all comparisons, five studies found more microbial biomass, two found more earthworms, and seven found untilled soils more stable. Under reduced tillage against conventional, the picture is at least as good: a meta-analysis and eleven replicated studies found more organic matter, with no study finding less, eleven found more microbial biomass, and five found more phosphorus. Nitrogen ran both ways under both systems.

What the studies found for the crop. Under no tillage, eight replicated controlled studies found higher yields in some or all comparisons, seven found lower, four found results running both ways and three found no difference. The panel's category, Likely to be ineffective or harmful, is about that spread, and it carries a 30 per cent harms score. One Italian study found less protein in wheat off untilled plots; one Spanish study found heavier grains.

What the studies found on weeds, which is the 40 per cent harms score. Three studies found more weeds under no tillage in some comparisons, four found results running both ways, and one found no difference. One Syrian study found most diseases no different but more Ascochyta blight without tillage. Nothing in the assessment measured the thing an English no-till farm would most want measured, grass weeds under a British rotation.

Conservation Evidence say themselves that studies are not directly comparable or of equal value, and that study size, design, reported metrics and relevance to your own situation matter more than "simply counting the number of studies that support a particular interpretation".

Source: Conservation Evidence, actions 1369, 1371, 1370, 1355 and 1397, key messages and supporting evidence from individual studies, all checked 23/08/2026.

What we have not found. Any British study in these assessments, and any measurement of a transition, the two or three awkward years between systems that decide most farms' experience. Nothing on blackgrass. Nothing measuring SOH1 itself. And no assessment of the herbicide side of the ledger, the extra reliance on the sprayer that establishment without steel involves, which sits outside what these assessments scored.

What the sources say makes it work better. Little transfers cleanly, and we will not stretch it. The one steady signal is time: organic matter gains under both systems showed up across studies running years rather than seasons, which sits sensibly alongside this action being static for three of them.

Source: Conservation Evidence, actions 1369 and 1371, key messages, checked 23/08/2026.

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 awkward truth of this page is that the evidence is kindest to the system the action excludes. A min-till farm reading this site gets told its system scored Beneficial for the soil, a category above full no-till, and that the paid-for step beyond it scored Unlikely to be beneficial, and then gets told it does not qualify for the payment. We are not going to pretend that arrangement makes evidential sense, and Defra's own pilot once included min-till before the expanded offer narrowed to no-till only. If your system is shallow cultivation and it is working, nothing on this page argues for changing it for this action's payment.

For the farm already no-till, the same table reads well: your soil direction is supported, your system's real economics are in the passes you no longer make, and the payment is a bonus on top of a decision you made for other reasons. Take it, and let the static rule and the drill invoices be the only new things in your life.

For the farm thinking of switching, the crop production row is the one to sit with. Yields under no-till went up in as many studies as they went down, in climates drier than yours, with the transition years unmeasured anywhere. That is not a warning against the system; plenty of British farms run it well. It is a statement that the deciding evidence is not in the literature, it is on farms like yours, and the honest way in is the way most farms actually do it, a field or two first, watching the yield map, not the whole rotation for a payment that would not cover one bad wheat.

What you actually have to do

Sow all seeds on the land you have entered using a no-till direct drill, which includes tine drills, disc drills and precision seed drills, drills with rearward-facing harrow tines among them, or broadcasting equipment. Do not use conventional cultivation or shallow min-till cultivation machinery to prepare the land, or between harvest and sowing, except for a stubble rake or a straw harrow with rearward facing tines, which the action names as the one exception. Low disturbance subsoiling to reduce compaction and mole draining to help natural drainage are allowed, except on land with historic or archaeological features. Do this for each year of the three year duration, on the same land throughout, since the action is static.

Source: GOV.UK, SOH1 action page, checked 24/08/2026.

Where it can go, and what rules it out

Agricultural land below the moorland line: arable land used to grow crops under compatible arable crop codes, temporary grassland under TG01 for up to 2 years, and arable land lying fallow under FA01. What you can enter is the total available area in a land parcel, taken at the point of application. One system is barred outright: you cannot do this action on land where you are tilling narrow strips of soil to plant crops and leaving the ground between the rows untilled, which GOV.UK calls strip tillage. The static rule means the parcels you choose are the parcels for the whole agreement, so it fits ground that will stay in combinable cropping for three years and does not fit ground that might go to roots, veg or a ley beyond the two year grass allowance.

Source: GOV.UK, SOH1 action page, checked 24/08/2026.

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.

Min-till does not count, and that is the whole game. The exclusion is written into the action: shallow min-till machinery is named alongside conventional cultivation as what you must not use. A farm that direct drills most things but runs a shallow disc over a stale seedbed in September has a question to answer before entering, and it is better answered before the agreement than during it.

Static means choose parcels like you mean it. Three years, same ground. The parcel that might need a root crop, a re-seed, or one remedial plough after a wet harvest is the parcel to leave out, because the action offers no way to move.

The subsoiler exception has a boundary. Low disturbance subsoiling and mole draining are allowed for compaction and drainage, but not on land with historic or archaeological features, so the HEFER check applies to your iron as well as your seed here.

One pass in a bad autumn undoes a parcel. The prohibition covers cultivation between harvest and sowing. The year the drill will not travel and the temptation is one quick pass with the discs is the year this action is really tested, and the honest options are a later drilling date or that parcel's payment, not both.

The drill on the invoice is part of your evidence. If a contractor establishes your crops, their invoice naming the drill does quiet work for you. If you hire a drill for the switch, keep the hire paperwork for the same reason.

Keeping the evidence

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

GOV.UK's examples are field operations at land parcel level with associated invoices, and photographs.

This action's evidence is unusual in being about absence, no cultivation happened, which is hard to photograph. What can be recorded is what did happen: every establishment operation against the parcel with the drill named, the subsoiling or mole draining passes with their reason noted, and a photograph at drilling, stubble or cover visible, drill in the ground, which shows establishment into unmoved soil better than any words. Three years of operations records with no cultivation entries in them is itself the story.

Tilth records operations against the parcel with dates and machines, holds invoices against jobs, and lets you attach photographs, so the record of what happened, and the absence of what did not, builds itself as you work.

The part only your own ground can answer

Whether no-till works here is answered in your fields, not in Spain. Yields by field through and after any transition, the establishment costs you actually stop paying, and what the weed burden does over three static years are the whole decision, and every one of those lives in your own records. Tilth holds your operations, your costs and your yield maps in the same place, which is what makes the before-and-after readable. Request an invite.