See our short film, Pasture-fed Production, describing the project findings. A Policy and Practice note which covers livestock related projects under the Global Food Security programme will also be available soon. Publications arising from the project are listed on the results page.
We recommend the use of existing protocols for farmer soil testing, there are lots of great resources already out there, see, for example:
If you are interested in soil health, uksoils, the community hub for all things soil, also provides access to a wide range of soil-related resources.
We have been working with the PFLA Research group on raising the profile of biodiversity on farms with a view to move on to providing advice on monitoring approaches, so keep an eye on the PFLA website for information on monitoring biodiversity on your farm.
Your ability to recognise plant species and how much time you have will affect what you can do. If you are very interested in encouraging lots of plant species and are in an area of high botanical diversity you may be able to encourage local experts (e.g. from area Wildlife Trusts) to help you. If you are more interested in encouraging diversity to maintain grazing and soil quality, you could try simpler monitoring methods that do not require you to know all species present.
We've produced these guidelines to help you:
The key thing about monitoring either soils or biodiversity is to be as consistent with your methods as you can be – same places, similar time of year, similar day (climate wise), same methods and record what you find so that you can see how things are changing.