A farm legal resilience checklist: 10-Minute audit to protect your business in 2026
Resilience isn’t just a buzzword – it’s an important part of ensuring your farm or estate is well placed to weather turbulent economic times and political headwinds. The Oxford Farming Conference kicks off today, with the central theme “Growing Resilience”. With that in mind, our first Field Notes edition of 2026 sets out a quick legal resilience audit. This is designed for farm owners, partners and managers to run through and share at your next board, partnership or family meeting. It flags the pressure points that most often undermine performance and turns them into clear, near‑term actions. Pulling together the information needed might take 10 minutes or less for smaller or more straightforward operations. While the audit will take a little longer to complete for larger or more complex holdings it’s still likely to be a very modest time investment that could save a lot of future hassle and be time well spent.
1. Contracts: built for bumpy markets?
Start with the contracts that matter most. In supply contracts, do you have a price review or index that applies when inputs or market prices shift - or only at the buyer’s discretion? Make sure quality specs and tolerances fit your system, and that rejection rights are clear, tight and time‑limited. Build in volume flexibility where you might need it and realistic delivery windows, so you are not paying avoidable liquidated damages. Force majeure and hardship should reflect weather and market shocks and point to renegotiation before termination. On the buying side, match contract terms to cropping and livestock cycles and watch exclusivity and “most‑favoured” clauses that block better routes to market. And in contractor templates, check the health and safety provisions, insurance and data duties - and ensure audit rights are reciprocal.
2. Tenancies and land: control that matches the plan
List every parcel and be clear about the basis on which it's occupied: owned, AHA, FBT, grazing licence, contract/share farming or an informal arrangement. Do your occupation terms actually let you deliver the cropping, livestock and scheme choices you want? Freedom of cropping’s a statutory right for AHAs but it’s important to consider what else you want or need to do on holding. Modern FBTs should spell out environmental works, access for habitats and how scheme income and costs are split. Line up break clauses and rent reviews with scheme cycles so you are not stuck with uneconomic management. Avoid accidental tenancies – it’s very important to ensure that short grazing or cropping licences do not give exclusive possession. Record repair standards and who is responsible for trees, boundaries and watercourses. If you rely on third‑party land or buildings, diarise renewal dates and consents before you commit others, including any bank or a developer.
3. Schemes and natural capital: stack value, don’t double‑sell
List what you are in now (SFI, Countryside Stewardship) and what you are considering (BNG, nutrient schemes, carbon codes). Note parcel‑level promises, evidence needed and whether you would pass an inspection tomorrow. If you are mixing public money with private nature markets, set a simple hierarchy so the same unit of benefit is not committed twice – what “additionality” are you offering – what “extra” benefit does the buyer get for their money beyond what you’re committed to doing otherwise? Keep baselines, maps and photos tidy and time‑stamped. If income depends on 30‑year management, check future tenancy and mortgage documents will allow it, and confirm who holds the management/security obligations. And what about ensuring environmental commitments are binding for the future? Habitat banks and other environmental commitments can be secured in different ways depending on the circumstances and the degree of control and transferability that’s needed – consider whether your circumstances are better suited to a s106 agreement or conservation covenant.
4. Environment and water: stay legal, stay productive
Walk the hotspots: slurry and pesticide stores, fuel tanks, watercourse gateways, busy yards. Check storage capacity against the rules and your stocking and rainfall profile. For nutrients, ask: would my records and field risk assessments pass inspection today? And do contractor terms mirror my duties? If you rely on abstraction or a winter storage reservoir, confirm licence status, renewal lead‑times and conditions, and plan for drought restrictions. Align hedges, trees and soils with scheme and tenancy wording so that improvements are recorded and can be compensated where they should be.
5. People and operations: lawful flex at peak
Make sure staff and regular contractors have up‑to‑date written terms, right‑to‑work checks and training records. For harvests and lambing, choose your model. Are you going to opt for direct hire, agency, labour provider or contractors? Test that preference against working time, accommodation and transport standards. If you contract out operations, your agreement should pin down health and safety responsibilities, method statements and incident reporting – and take care to avoid inadvertently creating employment relationships or triggering TUPE on changeover. Keep a simple skills matrix so you can identify single points of failure in livestock care, spraying, records and maintenance and can plan cover. Review risk areas with insurers’ expectations in mind.
6. Insurance: cover that actually covers your risks
Put the policies on the table – what cover do you have for property, public/products liability, employers’ liability, motor, environmental, business interruption and any weather cover? Do you have legal expenses insurance? Update sums insured and limits for today’s rebuild and turnover figures and watch out for the sub‑limits that apply first: pollution, goods in transit, stock in the open, power loss. Read notification and mitigation conditions and line them up with your contractual force majeure and hardship clauses where you can; if supply contracts push risk back to you, the policy needs to align with that. For energy, AD and storage kit, check decommissioning, grid curtailment and revenue protection are clearly addressed.
7. Data and tech: own it, back it up, use it
List where the vital data lives: agronomy platforms, yield maps, telematics, livestock software, drone imagery, trial results. Who actually owns or can use that data? Is that negotiable? Does it work for you? Tighten confidentiality in your commercial deals to protect prices and performance information. Where there is personal data such as staff information and CCTV make sure the right notices and retention policies exist. For critical tools, set up off‑platform backups and clear exit rights so you can retrieve historic data if a subscription ends or a supplier fails.
8. Governance and succession: decisions that stick
Get out the partnership agreement, company articles and any shareholders’ agreement and check they reflect reality on the ground. If you have a partnership but no written agreement resolving that (and putting an agreement in place) is a good place to start. Who decides what, who signs with the bank, and how do you resolve deadlock? What is and is not partnership property? If there’s a limited company, what should the company own? Tie ownership and day‑to‑day control to the actual plan: if the next generation is stepping up, align roles, pay and capital accounts. Revisit wills and letters of wishes so they fit the current land and tenancy picture, and check lender and landlord requirements against any succession or reorganisation you are planning. Make sure that your will and your partnership agreement are not in conflict.
What to do this quarter
Pick one to three wins that cut risk fastest. For many farms that means one or more of the following:
- Explore if there’s scope to sharpen price review and review any break clauses in key contracts;
- Align tenancy terms with scheme participation;
- Make sure your partnership has a written agreement in place; and
- Get environmental compliance evidenced.
Assign an owner to each task, set short deadlines and record what changed. Do it again next quarter. That is how resilience grows.
How can we help?
Our team of dispute resolution lawyers can help you review your existing arrangements and suggest measures to mitigate the risk of future disputes as well as help you resolve any disputes that may have arisen.
Please do give us a call if you’d like to discuss how we can assist. We are attending Oxford Farming Conference this week (7 - 9 January 2026) so do let Maddie Dunn know if you'd like to catch up during the conference.
Field Notes is Charles Russell Speechlys’ weekly agricultural law blog, sharing plain-English insight into the legal and policy issues affecting agriculture, agricultural land and rural business life. From hints and tips on avoiding agricultural disputes, pitfalls to keep an eye out when planning for tenancy or family agri-business succession, to the latest agricultural legislative or policy changes and the most interesting farm-related court decisions, Field Notes makes the complex more understandable, always grounded in the realities of life on (and off) the land.
Field Notes comes out every Wednesday. Previous editions of Field Notes include:
