Adding composted farmyard manure (FYM) to fields is a low intensity soil management approach that can have multiple soil health benefits. It supplies essential nutrients, improves soil structure and stability, and increases both water holding capacity and soil organic matter. These improvements lead to healthier, more productive, soils and help reduce nutrient run off into nearby watercourses.
Northumberland’s soils face pressures including widespread nutrient deficiencies, declining organic matter, soil degradation, compaction, and biodiversity loss. These issues weaken soil function, reducing crop productivity and resilience, and lead to a declining overall environmental quality.
Despite strong scientific evidence that applying composted farmyard manure can help to improve soil health, its use is not widely adopted across the WADER project area, meaning many of its potential benefits are not yet being fully realised.
WADER set up a two-year demonstration project to test the benefits of applying FYM on a local farm with in-depth monitoring of treated soil and crop samples. The site then served as a demonstration area, allowing farmers and land managers to see the practical application of FYM and helping to influence local land management practices.
Composted farmyard manure (FYM) was applied before drilling winter wheat each year from 2023 to 2025. The demonstration field contained four FYM treated strips (100 m × 12 m), each separated by an untreated control strip of the same size, giving four treatment and four control strips in total. Winter wheat was drilled uniformly across all strips, and each spring a top dressing fertiliser was applied to both FYM and control areas. The crop was harvested each summer, and the annual sequence of FYM application, drilling, fertilisation, and harvesting was repeated throughout the project.
Seasonal monitoring took place across both treatment and control strips. FYM was analysed each year before application to determine its nutrient content, organic matter, pH, and key mineral composition. The soil was sampled before the project began and again each spring and summer to assess physical, chemical, and biological attributes, including texture, pH, nutrient availability, organic matter, mineral nitrogen, carbon to nitrogen ratio, and microbial community composition. Plant health was evaluated each spring using leaf tissue analysis, and grain samples were tested after harvest each summer to assess nutrient uptake and grain quality.
Weather data including temperature, rainfall, and soil moisture was continuously recorded using an in field weather station.
Across 2024 – 2025 the strips treated with FYM showed consistently improving trends across soil indicators, leaf and grain nutrient composition, and the overall crop yield.
