How to prepare a farm or agricultural land for flooding
Identify areas at risk of flooding
Find areas at risk of flooding on your land:
- Find your flood risk from rivers, surface water, smaller watercourses and the sea
- Identify areas that are low-lying and where water tends to pool
- Identify areas close to watercourses or their flood plains
- Identify areas with compact soil, as this reduces the amount of water that can soak into the ground
Create a flood plan for your farm
Create a flood plan so that in an emergency everyone knows what action needs to be taken and by whom. You may already have an accident or emergency plan that could be adapted.
Share your flood plan with all staff so they are familiar with it. Keep your plan somewhere safe and easily accessible.
Your plan should include but not be limited to:
- Appropriate trigger points for specific actions such as moving livestock, equipment or evacuating personnel. This could be a flood alert, flood warning or locally observed conditions.
- Identity if there’s anything on your farm that could cause harm. Include potentially hazardous substances like pesticides, chemicals, fuel, oil and substances that could contaminate floodwater, including animal feed, fertiliser, organic manure, silage and milk.
- Consider how you will move any livestock, machinery or stored materials
- Consider any flood protection equipment.
- Locations and contact details for emergency equipment.
- Identify actions required to ensure business continuity, for example an alternative power supply.
Reduce the risk or impact of flooding
It is your responsibility to manage the flood risk on land you own near a watercourse.
Find out more about riverside property land owners rights and responsibilities.
Simple steps can protect your land and those further down from the impacts of flooding.
The first step is to understand how water moves on your land and the factors that can increase flood risk.
Find more information in the Welsh Government’s Code of good agricultural practice.
Collect or intercept flowing water
Flooding is most likely to happen when water runoff is quick. Slowing down the flow of water can help to reduce the risk of flooding. You could:
- Harvest rainwater for re-use by using water butts
- Discharge roof water into swales or soakaways around the farm
- Create run off ponds, to temporarily store water
- Break up slopes with buffer strips to intercept run off
- Plant trees, hedges and cover crops to intercept rainfall, stabilise the land and increase water take up
Reduce soil compaction
Compaction reduces the ability of rainfall to be absorbed by the soil, which causes the water to flow overland. Runoff overland can quickly increase in speed that rainfall reaches a watercourse, increasing the likelihood of flooding. It can also erode and carry away soil.
To reduce soil compaction you could:
Regularly move livestock and avoid using the same feed areas for extended periods
- Plant a diverse grassland with deep rooted species
- Avoid using machinery on wet soils
- Limit or control traffic routes on site
- Take action to improve soil structure when the land is drier
- Use cover crops post-harvest to stabilise the soil
- Use low-ground-pressure tyres
- Loosen soil after harvest to leave a rough surface to allow more water to soak in
More information on soil quality is available on the Farming Connect site.
Reduce the risk of agricultural pollution
Hazardous substances, including pesticides, chemicals, fuel and oil could contaminate floodwater. Animal feed, fertiliser, organic manure, silage and milk can also contaminate water.
Manure heaps should not be located on land liable to flooding.
Divert clean water away from slurry stores, livestock feed and loafing yards, and anywhere else that it may become contaminated. You can do this by:
- having sealed yard drains
- keeping well maintained guttering
- using raised concrete or channels to divert clean water away from dirty yards
- roofing over dirty yards
- reducing the number of yards that are contaminated with livestock manure or slurry
- fixing leaky taps and drinking troughs
Dirty and contaminated water must not be discharged or allowed to enter watercourses, springs or wells.
Dirty and contaminated water could be slurry (liquid or semi-liquid matter composed of excreta) or a mixture wholly or mainly consisting of livestock excreta, livestock bedding, rainwater and washings from a building or yard used by livestock of a consistency that allows it to be pumped
Lightly fouled water (dirty water) could be livestock urine or faeces contaminating otherwise clean rainfall derived run off but with a low nutrient content e.g. from yards trafficked by livestock where the yards are regularly scraped or cleaned.
For some of these measures, you may need permission from your local authority or NRW. If you are unsure, please get in touch with us at enquires@naturalresources.wales
Check flood warnings
We use three types of flood warnings for flooding from rivers or the sea.
These could give you time to protect your home and move livestock or machinery.
We issue a ‘Flood Alert’ (the lowest level of risk) when we expect flooding of farmland.
We issue a ‘Flood Warning’ when we expect flooding of homes and businesses.
We issue a ‘Severe Flood Warning’ when we expect danger to life.
Consider this when you create your flood plan, to ensure you have enough time to take action.
Check our live flood warnings and alert map to see all live warnings across Wales.
You can also check if you can sign up to our flood warning service to receive free direct messages by email, telephone or text message.
Other sources of live information
View our 5 day flood risk for the daily forecast of flooding in your local authority area.
View your local river levels, rainfall and sea data as an indication of local conditions.
Natural flood management case study