Plant protection spray records: what they must include and how to keep them without stress

Who has to keep plant protection product records, what to write down, how long to keep them, and how to avoid rewriting the notebook before an inspection.

Keeping records of plant protection treatments is required of every professional user of plant protection products, which means nearly every farm with crops. The trouble is rarely the rule itself. It's that the notes get written in a rush, on your knee, and then have to be copied out neatly before an inspection.

What the records must contain

Under EU Regulation 1107/2009 and national plant protection law, every treatment record should include at least:

• the name of the product,
• the date of the treatment and the dose,
• the crop and the area (field) treated,
• the reason for the treatment: the disease, pest or weeds.

Records must be kept for at least 3 years. EU rules (Implementing Regulation 2023/564) have specified the content in more detail and push towards keeping records electronically, so check the current requirements with your national plant protection authority.

Why a notebook falls short

• You spray in May and write it down in June, because there's no time in season.
• Field names in the notebook don't match the ones in your subsidy application.
• Products and doses have to be dug out of invoices later to work out crop costs.
• Before an inspection you copy the whole year out again.

Keeping spray records in FarmOps

In FarmOps you log each treatment against a specific field, with the date, product and dose, even out in a field with no signal. The product is deducted from your store automatically and the cost goes to that field's finances. At the end of the year you download the treatment register as a PDF or CSV, ready to print or show at an inspection.

Your whole farm in one app

Barn, fields, garage and finances on one phone. Get FarmOps and leave the notebook in the drawer.