Part of the Farm Management Software Guide

Farming May 2026 11 min read

SFI26 Evidence Requirements: What Your Farm Management Software Needs to Capture

SFI26 replaces SFI24 with 71 actions, a £100,000 annual cap, and evidence requirements that most farms are not equipped to meet at scale. Photo evidence, dated field operation logs, soil test results, invoices, and receipts must be captured for every action, linked to every parcel, and retained for seven years after your agreement ends. Application Window 1 opens in June 2026 and may close early if the budget is allocated. This guide covers exactly what evidence you need, how long you must keep it, what the main software platforms handle, and where the gaps are.

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Actions in SFI26 (down from 102 in SFI24)

£100k

New annual agreement cap per farm

7 yrs

Records must be retained after agreement ends (up to 10 years total)

What Changed from SFI24 to SFI26

SFI26 is a significant restructure, not a minor update. The key changes affect how many actions you can take, how much you can earn, and how you prove you did what you claimed.

71 actions, down from 102. 31 actions were removed, including widely used management actions such as soil assessments, nutrient assessments, pest assessments, and hedgerow assessments. All SFI management payments have been withdrawn
£100,000 annual agreement cap. Only one SFI26 agreement is permitted per farm. This cap is designed to spread funding more widely across holdings
3-hectare minimum eligibility threshold. Farms below 3 hectares are excluded from SFI26
3-year agreements. All actions are now 3-year commitments, replacing the mixed durations of SFI24. This simplifies planning but locks you in
Payment rate changes. Some rates increased (e.g. moderate livestock grazing on moorland: £20/ha to £35/ha). Others decreased substantially (herbal leys: £382/ha to £224/ha; winter bird food: £853/ha to £648/ha). Existing SFI agreements retain their original payment rates

Application Windows

Window 1 opens in June 2026 and is expected to remain open for around two months, although it may close sooner if demand is high and the budget is fully allocated. Window 2 opens in September 2026 and is available to all farms. If you are planning to apply in Window 1, your evidence capture infrastructure needs to be operational before the agreement starts, not after.

This is expected to be a competitive round. The £100,000 cap means individual farms receive less. Defra has signalled that budget allocation per window is limited. If you delay your application to Window 2, the available budget may already be reduced. Getting your evidence systems ready for a Window 1 application is the pragmatic approach.

The Evidence Problem: What SFI26 Actually Requires

The simplification of SFI26 (fewer actions, clearer definitions) does not mean lighter evidence requirements. Inspectors do not rely on verbal accounts. They rely on proof that can be traced back in time and clearly linked to your claim. "Simpler does not mean lighter on compliance," as the Defra guidance makes clear.

Evidence Types

The evidence types you will need most often are:

Photographs. Clear, dated photos showing the whole feature plus close-ups. GPS-tagged where possible. Linked to the specific parcel and action. At minimum: one wide shot of each entered field showing boundaries, plus two or three close-ups of key features (cover crops, margins, drains, hedge condition, gateways)
Short videos. Dated and clearly showing the feature or operation in question
Dated field operation logs. Records of what was done, when, on which parcel, by whom. Includes cultivation, drilling, spraying, mowing, grazing periods, and any management interventions
Soil test results. Linked to specific parcels and dated. Some actions require baseline soil testing before the action begins
Invoices and receipts. For seed, fertiliser, fencing, equipment, contractor work. Must be linkable to specific actions and parcels
Notes linking evidence to claims. Written notes that show how and when you met an action's aim, connecting the physical evidence to the annual declaration

Retention Requirements

All evidence must be retained for seven years after the agreement ends. With 3-year agreements, that means up to 10 years of records for evidence captured in year one. Annual and rotational declarations must be submitted digitally via the RPA portal. The records backing those declarations need to be retrievable for a decade.

The scale of the problem. JustFarm, a farming app company, warned in early 2026 that "most farms currently lack the tools and capacity to gather and organise the evidence SFI26 requires at scale." This is not a criticism of farmers. It is a recognition that the evidence infrastructure the scheme demands did not exist when most farms set up their current record-keeping systems. The gap between what the scheme requires and what most operations can produce is real.

What Farm Management Software Currently Handles

The main UK farm management platforms (Farmplan, Gatekeeper, Muddy Boots, Ag-Hub) were built for crop planning, field records, and compliance reporting. They handle many of the record-keeping requirements well, but the SFI26 evidence capture problem is different from conventional farm record-keeping. For a full comparison of these platforms, see our farm management software comparison.

SFI26 Requirement	Farmplan	Gatekeeper	Muddy Boots	JustFarm
Field operation logs	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
GPS-tagged photo capture	Limited	Limited	Limited	Yes (mobile app)
Photo linked to parcel + action	Manual	Manual	Manual	Automated
Soil test result storage	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Invoice/receipt linking to actions	Manual	Manual	Manual	Partial
10-year retention with retrieval	Depends on subscription	Depends on subscription	Depends on subscription	Cloud-based
Annual declaration preparation	Manual	Manual	Manual	Guided

JustFarm is the only platform that has built explicitly around SFI evidence capture, with a mobile app designed for GPS-tagged photo evidence linked directly to parcels and actions. The established platforms (Farmplan, Gatekeeper, Muddy Boots) handle conventional farm records well but require manual processes to link photo evidence to specific SFI actions and parcels. For most farms, that manual linking is where the system breaks down at scale.

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FETF 2026: Using Tech Grants to Fund Evidence Infrastructure

The Farming Equipment and Technology Fund (FETF) 2026 offers £50 million across three themes: Productivity (£20m), Slurry (£10m), and Animal Health and Welfare (£20m). Grants range from £1,000 to £25,000 per theme, with a combined maximum of £75,000 per business. Most items are funded at 40 to 50 percent of their listed cost.

The application deadline was extended to midday on 12 May 2026. This is expected to be the final standalone round of FETF in its current format, with changes planned from 2027.

FETF funds precision tools, monitoring systems, and digital technologies. If your farm needs GPS-enabled devices for evidence capture, soil testing equipment, or digital monitoring systems, FETF can cover a significant portion of the cost. The connection is direct: the same digital tools that qualify for FETF funding are the ones that generate the evidence SFI26 requires.

A separate Capital Grants round with £225 million available opens in July 2026 for larger investments. For more on how grant schemes connect to farm software requirements, see our SFI and ELMS software requirements guide.

Building an Evidence Capture System for SFI26

Whether you use existing farm management software, a dedicated tool like JustFarm, or a bespoke system, the evidence capture workflow for SFI26 should follow this structure:

1. Parcel and Action Setup

Before your agreement starts, map every parcel to every action you have selected. Each action has specific evidence requirements. Your system should list what evidence types are needed for each action on each parcel, so nothing is missed during the agreement period.

2. Ongoing Evidence Capture

Throughout the year, capture evidence as operations happen. Photographs taken at the time of an operation (drilling, mowing, grazing) are far more credible than retrospective photos. GPS tagging and automatic date stamping eliminate disputes about when and where evidence was captured. Your system should make it easy to capture evidence in the field, on a phone, and have it automatically linked to the correct parcel and action.

3. Annual Declaration

At the end of each scheme year, you must submit an annual or rotational declaration via the RPA portal. Your system should aggregate all evidence for each action across all parcels, flag any gaps where evidence is missing, and prepare the information needed for the declaration. This is the point where farms without organised evidence discover the problem.

4. Storage and Retrieval

Seven years after your agreement ends, you must still be able to retrieve any piece of evidence on demand. This rules out local storage on a single phone or computer (which may be replaced multiple times over a decade). Cloud-based storage with structured retrieval by parcel, action, date, and evidence type is the practical requirement.

The inheritance tax context. Farmers are already dealing with the April 2026 change to Agricultural Property Relief (100% relief now limited to the first £2.5 million of combined agricultural and business property). SFI26 evidence requirements land on top of a sector that is financially stressed, emotionally exhausted from the inheritance tax protests, and suspicious of additional administrative burden. Software that makes evidence capture genuinely easy, not just possible, will be the difference between farms engaging with the scheme and walking away from the payments.

When Bespoke Software Makes Sense

For farms running a single holding with a small number of SFI actions, JustFarm or a well-configured Gatekeeper setup will handle evidence capture adequately. For more complex operations, bespoke makes sense in specific scenarios.

Multi-holding operations. Farms managing multiple holdings with different SFI agreements, different action sets, and different evidence requirements per parcel need a system that consolidates evidence across holdings while keeping compliance records separate per agreement. Off-the-shelf platforms are typically designed for single-holding management
Diversified farms. Farms combining arable with livestock, farm shop, glamping, or events need evidence capture that works alongside booking systems, stock management, and retail POS. A bespoke system can handle SFI evidence within a broader operational platform rather than running multiple disconnected tools. We cover diversification software needs in our farm diversification guide
Farms that need Red Tractor and SFI evidence in one system. Many farms maintain Red Tractor assurance alongside SFI. The evidence requirements overlap significantly (field records, spray records, livestock health plans). A bespoke system can capture evidence once and map it to both compliance frameworks, eliminating the duplication that comes from running separate tools for each
Farms where the farmer will not use an app. Some farming operations have workforce demographics where a smartphone app is not the right interface. A bespoke system can use rugged tablets, voice recording, or simplified input methods tailored to the people who actually capture the evidence in the field

SFI26's simplification of actions is welcome. The evidence requirements behind those actions are not simple. Farms that get their evidence infrastructure right before Window 1 opens will have a material advantage over those who discover the gaps after their first annual declaration.

Sources

Industry hub

Farm Management Software for UK Farms