Red Tractor combinable crops: records the audit wants

A Red Tractor combinable crops audit is rarely failed on farming. It's lost — or at least made miserable — on paperwork that exists but can't be found. The store was cleaned; nobody wrote it down. The moisture meter was checked; the certificate is in an email somewhere. The bait points are marked on a laminated map from three versions of the standard ago.

The fix isn't more record keeping. It's knowing which families of records the assessor will ask for and keeping each family in one place you could reach in a minute. One caveat before the detail: standards get revised, so treat everything below as the general shape and check the current version of the combinable crops standard for the letter of it.

The record families the audit works through

In general terms, a combinable crops assessment wants evidence in these areas:

Record family	What it looks like in practice
Store cleaning and maintenance	Dated notes that each store was cleaned, repaired and ready before intake
Pest and rodent monitoring	A bait plan or map, dated checks of bait points and traps, and what was done when something turned up
Calibration	Moisture meter checks against a reference, plus calibration for applicators and weighers where relevant
Grain treatments	What was applied to grain or store fabric, when, at what rate, and by whom
Grain passports	Completed passports for every load off the farm, with your copies retained
Traceability	The chain from field to store to sale — which grain went into which shed and left on which load

None of it is exotic. Most of it is a line in a diary or a signature on a form at the time the job is done. The trouble is that the six families tend to live in six different places — the spray software, the ticket book, a clipboard in the store, the agronomist's system, the office — and the audit is the one day of the year they all have to appear together. That's a filing problem, and general record keeping habits solve most of it.

The pre-audit fortnight

Two weeks out is the right time to assemble everything, because it's long enough to backfill the slow gaps. Work through the table above and put each family into one folder — physical or digital, the assessor won't mind which, as long as it's legible and dated.

The gaps that take longest to close, in rough order of pain:

• Calibration evidence. If the moisture meter has never been checked against anything, you can't backdate that. Get it checked or compared against a merchant's meter now and start the record — a dated note of the comparison is a record; a vague memory of "it reads about right" isn't.
• Bait plans and pest checks. A map of bait points is quick to draw, but the standard expects dated monitoring, not a map alone. If checks have been happening without paperwork, start writing them down immediately — a fortnight of real records beats a year of invented ones, and assessors can tell the difference.
• Store cleaning records. Usually the job was done; usually nothing was written. A dated entry per store, signed by whoever did it, is all this needs — but it has to exist before intake, so it's much easier to keep live than to reconstruct. The grain store preparation checklist doubles as the record if you date and keep it.
• Treatment records. If grain protectant went on at intake, the record needs product, rate, date and operator. Cross-check it against what the grain passports declared — a mismatch between the two is exactly the kind of thing an assessor notices.

Passports and traceability, by contrast, are usually quick to assemble if harvest records were kept at all — see below.

Traceability is mostly harvest records you already want

The traceability section sounds ominous and is actually the easiest part for any farm that records loads properly. If every trailer over the weighbridge got a ticket with crop, field and destination shed, and every outgoing load has a passport and contract reference, the chain from field to store to sale already exists. The audit just wants to follow one or two loads through it.

This is the happy overlap between compliance and useful management: the same records that produce field yields and shed totals are the ones the assessor traces. Farms that track harvest properly tend to sail through this section without preparing for it at all.

Is it worth the bother?

The scheme costs real money — membership and assessment typically run to a few hundred pounds a year for a combinable crops farm, depending on size (check current fees) — and the record discipline costs time. Against that, non-assured grain is harder to sell and usually discounted; even a £5/t penalty on 1,000 tonnes of wheat is £5,000, and many buyers simply won't take non-assured grain at any sensible price. For most commercial arable farms the question isn't whether to be assured, it's how to make the audit cheap in time and nerves.

The answer is the boring one: keep the records live, in one place per family, and the audit becomes a morning of showing folders rather than a fortnight of scrambling.

Frequently Asked Questions

What records does Red Tractor require for combinable crops?

In general terms: store cleaning and maintenance records, pest and rodent monitoring with a bait plan, calibration records for moisture meters and applicators, grain treatment records, completed grain passports, and traceability from field to store to sale. Standards are revised periodically, so check the current version of the combinable crops standard for exact requirements.

How long before a Red Tractor audit should I start preparing?

A fortnight is comfortable if records have been kept at all, because it leaves time to close the slow gaps — calibration checks and pest monitoring records can't be conjured overnight. If records are genuinely live year-round, preparation drops to an hour or two of gathering folders.

Do I need a calibration certificate for my moisture meter?

You need dated evidence the meter is checked against something — a professional calibration, or a documented comparison against a merchant's or central store's meter. Check the current standard for what's expected; the thing that fails audits is having no record of any check at all.

Does Red Tractor accept digital records?

Yes — dated, legible digital records are fine and generally easier to present than paper. What matters is that they exist, they're retrievable during the assessment, and they cover the areas the standard asks for.