Nature Reporting Glossary

Accredited Professional: an existing Land App user with qualifications and insurance to advise farmers. These individuals have passed a series of “tests” to ensure that they are using the Land App correctly, to increase the quality of data collected and to act in support role for the farmers. 

Farm: A business entity that is under the management of an individual. They may sell/grow multiple types of produce types, and supply multiple processors and retailers. They can be represented by one or more SBI numbers, Land Registry Title numbers or CPH 

Single Business Identifier -a unique number given to all English farms that claim subsidies from the Rural Payments Agency. Each SBI can have multiple people associated with a business a unique Personal Identifier (PI). A person will only have one PI even if they represent more than one business.

Land App can use a SBI number to extract Land Cover, Parcel and Hedgerow data from the Rural Payments Agency

County Parish Holding (CPH) number – a single number that represents the land and buildings used to keep livestock for any purpose, including those kept as pets. It’s sometimes referred to as a holding number. Available in England, Wales and Scotland.

Farmer/grower/food producer: the individuals with management control over the land, can be decision makers, or can be employee of the farming business. For this project, all will be known as “Farmers”. 

Tenant: a food producer / grower who has temporary management control over a piece of land to produce food (or other), but does not have long term decision making authority on that land, nor owns the land. 

Processor / Supplier: Entities that buy food from farms and transform raw ingredients into finished food products for retail and distribution

Land App – the mapping software that will be used by farmers, Accredited Professionals and Processors to create and share maps. 

“Nature, Risk and Resilience” Reporting: A tool produced by Land App that Waitrose staff will be able to access; reporting on over 68 metrics covering Biodiversity (e.g. Biodiversity Net Gain units), Farm Habitat Health (e.g. Core to edge ratio and Habitat connectedness), Regenerative Agriculture (e.g. Earth Observation on the percentage of cropped land with continuous winter cover), Water Pollution (e.g. percentage of productive land within poor/moderate/good WFD classifications and percentage of cropped land less than 12m from a watercourse), Risk (e.g. percentage area within flood zones) and Existing Scheme uptake (e.g. Countryside Stewardship agreements).

Biodiversity vs Habitats– 

Biodiversity refers to the variety of life forms within a specific area, ecosystem, or on Earth as a whole. 

Habitats: Refers to the physical environment where an organism, species, or community of species lives and interacts. A habitat provides the basic requirements for survival, such as food, water, shelter, and space.

Each species may have a specific habitat where it is best adapted to live.

Key Difference: Biodiversity is about the variety and abundance of life, while a habitat is the physical place where that life exists.

For this project, we will be mapping habitats as a proxy for biodiversity, but will not be collecting any species-specific information. 

Baseline Habitat Assessment (BHA) – a two-dimensional geospatial map of a farm or holding as of today (current), showing the extent of all physical features, in the language of UKHabitat Classification. Each woodland, arable field, grassland and hedgerow will be drawn on a map and is the underpinning of the “Nature, Risk and Resilience” System.

Land Management Plan (LMP) – a two-dimensional geospatial map of what the farm *could* look like in 10, 20 and 30 years time. It shows where the farmer has intent to either enhance or change land-use (e.g. planting a woodland or hedge, sowing cover crops, or buffering a water course) in the language of UKHabitat Classification. By comparing the Land Management Plan with the Baseline Habitat Assessment, the Nature Reporting system can quantify “uplift”.

UK Habitat Classification – a coding system that categorises and surveys habitats in the UK. It’s used by ecologists to map and record habitats for a variety of purposes, including Habitat surveys, Development projects (replacing the Phase 1 Habitat Survey in Preliminary Ecological Assessments) and Biodiversity Net Gain.