CSAM3: Herbal leys

One substantive change: the payment rate has been reduced.

That reduction applies only to SFI26 agreements. If you already hold this action under SFI23 or SFI24, your existing rate is unaffected.

Herbal leys is the largest action in the scheme by money paid - £177.2m across 16,790 agreements in 2025. No other SFI26 rate change applies to a base that size.

This action’s aim is that there’s an established herbal ley with:

• a mixture of grasses, legumes and herbs or wildflowers to provide varied root structures
• areas of flowering plants from late spring and during summer months

The purpose of this is to:

• produce a high volume of forage with minimal use of inorganic fertiliser
• improve resilience to drought
• help improve and maintain the soil’s structure, carbon, biology and fertility

What you must do

You must establish an herbal ley with a mixture of grass, legumes and herbs on land entered into this action.

You must use a seed mix which includes all of the following (as a minimum):

• 1 grass species
• 2 legume species
• 2 herb or wildflower species

If you’re establishing an herbal ley on land identified by you as being at risk of soil erosion or runoff, you must use establishment techniques which minimise the risk of soil erosion or runoff. You can use the soil management plan produced for CSAM1 (or SAM1) to identify this land.

Once the herbal ley is established, you must maintain it. To do this you must manage it in a way, and for a period of time, that can reasonably be expected to achieve this action’s aim.

You must minimise use of inorganic fertilisers containing nitrogen. Usually, this will be no more than around 40 kilograms of nitrogen per hectare per year.

You must not use the established herbal ley for storage or apply pesticides on it, except:

• for herbicides to weed wipe or spot treat to control injurious weeds, invasive non-native species, nettles or bracken
• to destroy the existing ley to establish a new herbal ley

You can maintain an existing herbal ley to get paid for this action if it:

• meets this action’s requirements – you may need to re-sow it to make sure it can reasonably be expected to achieve this action’s aim
• is not already being paid for under another environmental land management scheme option, such as CS option GS4 (legume and herb-rich swards)

When to do it

You must:

• establish the herbal ley by early autumn, within 12 months of this action’s start date
• maintain the herbal ley at the same location for a period of time that can reasonably be expected to achieve this action’s aim – this will usually be until the end of the second summer after sowing
• re-establish the herbal ley by early autumn (either at the same location or a different location) and maintain it until this action’s end date

Evidence to keep

You must keep evidence to show what you’ve done to complete this action, such as:

• field operations at a land parcel level and associated invoices, including details of the seed mix used
• photographs or other documentation

If it’s not clear that you’ve done this action in a way that could reasonably be expected to achieve its aim, we may ask for this evidence. You must supply the evidence if we ask for it.