Combinable Crops & Sugar Beet Standards Consultation
We’re inviting feedback on proposed changes to the Red Tractor Combinable Crops and Sugar Beet Standards.
The Combinable Crops and Sugar Beet Technical Advisory Committee (TAC), representing the whole supply chain, has reviewed every Combinable Crops and Sugar Beet standard, word by word. Their focus has been on making standards clearer and more proportionate. They have interrogated every requirement to ensure that it has a clear reason, protecting food and feed safety, traceability, market access and customer confidence. The result is a clearer, better-organised and less prescriptive set of standards with around a quarter fewer requirements.
The Combinable Crops and Sugar Beet Sector Board is now seeking to understand what these proposals would mean in practice, particularly to the farms and businesses that rely on them for assurance.
Your feedback shapes the final standards. The Combinable Crops and Sugar Beet TAC and Sector Board will consider all feedback before finalising the revised standards.
Review the proposals and share your feedback
Open to all stakeholders until 22 December 2026.
A message from the sector chair
“This review represents a significant step forward in improving Red Tractor assurance for farmers while maintaining market access and customer confidence. Every standard has been challenged. Nothing remains simply because it has always been there.”
Julian Sturdy, Sector Chair
How the proposals were developed
In 2025, Red Tractor committed to review its standards with the objective of delivering real, tangible change for farmers and growers. This is that review. It is a review for the sector, by the sector. Red Tractor staff facilitated the discussion, but industry representatives are the collective decision makers.
Every requirement has been justified, ensuring it has clear reasoning such as regulatory compliance, earned recognition or market access. Wherever possible unnecessary prescription and duplication has been removed and clarity improved.
Following this extensive technical review, the draft standards were interrogated by the Combinable Crops and Sugar Beet Sector Board.
The changes aim to deliver the priorities set by the Sector Board in December 2025, and incorporate advice from the Food Standards Agency, APHA, Certification Bodies and stakeholders throughout the crops supply chain.
Combinable Crops and Sugar Beet Governance
Find out more about the Crops Sector Board and TAC, and their objectives
Assurance beyond standards
This consultation focuses on the standards. In parallel, the TAC and Sector Board are looking at potential risk-based approaches to assurance including audit cycles and what is checked when. They are also exploring how technology can better support assessments. The aim is to deliver further efficiencies while maintaining rigour. More on this will follow in 2027.
Summary of the proposed changes
The proposals contain around a quarter fewer requirements, delivered through consolidation, reorganisation and removal of unnecessary requirements and prescription.
Justifications have been added for all remaining standards and related requirements are grouped more logically.
While much of what farmers need to do day to day won’t change, as most requirements reflect legislation, the proposals should make standards clearer and more straightforward to follow, removing avoidable prescription while maintaining customer confidence, earned recognition and market access.
Download a summary of proposed changes
Standards review: what’s been proposed
Clearer, simpler and easier to navigate
Consolidating overlapping requirements, removing unnecessary prescription and improving definitions and justifications to make standards easier to understand, navigate and apply.
- Storage requirements are organised around temporary, short-term and long-term storage.
- Soil, nutrient, fertiliser, pesticide, waste and pollution requirements are reorganised and linked to clearer justifications.
- Unnecessary administrative detail is removed where integrity can be protected more simply.
Storage: clearer requirements for different storage arrangements
The storage section has been reorganised around temporary, short-term and long-term storage, consolidating overlapping requirements and making it clearer that stored crops require a documented, risk-based storage strategy.
- Growers would continue to monitor issues such as temperature, moisture, water ingress and insect activity, but requirements from the AHDB Grain Storage Guide would be removed from the standards and moved to supporting guidance giving growers greater flexibility.
Pest control: Focusing the need on food and feed safety
The pest-control requirements have restructured to focus on food and feed safety.
- Following amendments to the requirements set by the Campaign for Responsible Rodenticides Use (CRRU), farmers using or buying professional rodenticides now need to complete CRRU approved training, with rodenticide use being ‘managed’ by rodenticide suppliers. Therefore, there is no need to duplicate CRRU requirements and standards around responsible use have been removed.
- Farms would still need effective controls to protect stored crops from contamination and pest damage. Toxic bait would continue to be secured and kept away from grain, with the revised wording covering both rat and mouse infestations, but detailed requirements already addressed elsewhere or better presented as guidance would be removed.
Environment protection with clearer supply-chain reasons
Growers would continue to demonstrate responsible management of soil, nutrients, fertilisers, pesticides, waste and pollution, but the requirements and their supporting evidence is grouped more logically and explained through clear justifications.
- A dedicated fertiliser section, including replacing the existing manure-management approach with a Nutrient Management Plan where applications are made to land.
- These requirements help the supply chain demonstrate due diligence supporting market recognition such as through SAI Silver and the case for future earned recognition responding to increasing regulatory and public scrutiny of environmental impacts, including water pollution.
- The Sector Board is particularly interested in supply chain feedback on the need for SAI Silver recognition outside of malting barley and sugar beet supply chains.
- Additional detailed supply chain justifications have been shared for Fertilisers, PPP and Waste & pollution standards.
Detailed justifications
Transport and traceability: less transport administration
- Standards connected to trailer identification and ownership records have been removed.
- The requirement for verifying assurance status by a Red Tractor sticker within Combinable Crops Passports has been removed. Instead, growers will be able to enter their Red Tractor membership number within either paper or electronic Combinable Crops Passport, with verification of assurance status completed by the onwards supply chain via the Red Tracker Checker or Tracker.
Irrigation section removed
The irrigation section has been removed. Feedback is invited on any implications for legal compliance, environmental protection or supply-chain assurance.
What’s not changing
- A common assurance scheme that enables merchants, millers, maltsters and other buyers to rely on a common standard rather than imposing separate controls.
- Recognition as a voluntary scheme under the EU Renewable Energy Directive (RED), the recognised urea stewardship scheme and the earned recognition with the Food Standards Agency (FSA), while reviewing the need for SAI Silver recognition across different supply chains.
- Much of what farmers need to do day to day won’t change, as it reflects legislation, but the standards are more clearly presented and justified making them more straightforward to follow and understand.
- Robust assurance and market confidence remain central. Food and feed safety, traceability, customer due diligence and market access remain at the heart of the scheme.
- Alignment with the principles of the Voluntary Initiative.
- Nothing changes until 2027, following UKAS approval.
- The assessment itself is unchanged for now – work to review assessment cycles is separate and ongoing.
Imported crops: the role of Red Tractor assurance
British growers have raised concerns about the different assurance requirements for homegrown and imported crops. As part of the standards review, the Sector Board explored these concerns and remains committed to working with the wider industry to better understand and address growers’ concerns on this issue.
Read a Q&A on assurance for British and imported crops.
Download the pdf of proposed changes
Read the existing Combinable Crops and Sugar Beet standards
Review the proposed changes in detail and take part in the consultation
The six-week consultation is open to all stakeholders with an interest in British food and farming. The consultation closes at midnight on 22 December 2026.
The Combinable Crops and Sugar Beet Sector Board wants to hear all points of view, and is particularly interested in whether how the proposals work for your farm or business. Read the justifications. Do you agree that the requirement is justified, and can you add any other justification?
Tell us where a requirement would be difficult, unclear or disproportionate on your system, and whether there is a better way to word it or a better way to evidence it.
We value all input, particularly feedback that will help us to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of farm assessments. Small changes count – in the last standards review, single-word changes proposed by respondents were adopted because they made a standard clearer.
To ensure your feedback is considered, please use the online form. Feedback shared via email or verbally cannot be incorporated into overall analysis.
What comes next
Feedback will be shared with the Combinable Crops and Sugar Beet Technical Advisory Committee and Sector Board for their consideration before updates to the standards are confirmed in 2027. They will then either agree final standards, make changes in response to feedback, or return specific areas for further consultation if needed.
Once standards are agreed assessor training, operational updates and UKAS approval follow. Final standards will be published at least three months before implementation.
Review the proposals and share your feedback
