The Benefits of Agricultural Land Drainage

Add Value and Maximise Returns

There are multiple advantages to land drainage.

Increase Yield Potential:  Well drained soils maximize crop growth rates and development through ensuring that the required nutrients, oxygen and trace elements are made available to the plant though the soil.  Wet soils create anerobic conditions for crop roots resulting in poor growing conditions which has a direct effect on yield potential of the field.

Reduce Variable Costs:  Seed, Fertiliser and chemical applications represent a substantial proportion of the total overall growing costs of most modern day conventional cropping systems.  In order to work well, these inputs need consistent and stable soils and crop cover to maximize their benefits.  The application of inputs on to uncropped or poorly performing areas of ground is not an option in modern agriculture.

Reduce Machinery costs:  Wet soils are also renowned for being more difficult to cultivate and establish a seedbed within and they have a smaller window in which work can be carried out by virtue of the fact that the land is in fact inaccessible to agricultural machinery whilst it is too wet because the modern day farming equipment will get stuck within the soils.  Having well drained soils allows farm equipment to operate in an efficient way and therefore reduces diesel consumption and reduces the likelihood of expensive rescue operations to retrieve stranded agricultural machinery.

Increase timeliness:  Well drained soils allow fields to dry out more quickly after periods of excessive or prolonged rainfall.  It is well known that sprays and fetilisers as well as drilling and harvesting operations need to happen within a very small work window in order to maximize the potential of the crop.  Agricultural land drainage facilitates this being able to happen.

Increase Land Values:  With the price of arable land at record levels and rural land continuing to remain in high demand; the need to keep the land in good conditions is of great importance.  Put simply, well drained land is worth considerably more than un-drained land which puts the landowner in a stronger position with regard to selling or letting the land.