British Survey of Fertiliser Practice (BSFP

Tender description

To collect and produce information on the use of fertilisers and manures in Great Britain. Work on this activity is directed by the Authority in liaison with the Scottish Government and the Welsh Government. The aim of the survey is to provide details of: a) application rates and timings of nitrogen (N), phosphate (P2O5), potash (K2O) and sulphur (SO3) fertilisers, lime (CaO) and the use of organic manures on grassland and individual crops and crop groups; b) Applications should be estimated on the basis of each of application rates, dressing cover and overall field rates c) trends in fertiliser and organic manure use by ensuring that key series are maintained; d) breakdowns of the pattern of fertiliser usage split by Government Office Region for England and for the whole of Wales and Scotland; breakdown of Scottish data by land use region is not one of the standard output tabulations but the design of the survey should allow reliable reporting of data to this level if requested; e) use of fertilisers by farm type; f) different fertiliser produce types used, broken down by major crop groups e.g. cereals, oilseeds, pulses, grassland, month of application and application rate; g) fertiliser use on major arable tillage crops and grassland; h) Information on the drivers of changing fertiliser use. Lot 1: The Contractor will: a) Provide an annual report with standard tabulations for the key data series that ensure continuity and consistency with previous years, including survey standard error estimates. All tabular data from the report should also be available in a machine readable format such as Microsoft Excel. Provisional key results are required by the end of November and a final report by the end of February the detail of which will be agreed in advance with the Authority. b) Construct a farm level dataset, by the end of February and incorporate this dataset into a database of results from previous years, ensuring that fertiliser use of individual farms can be tracked over time. c) Answer additional data requests on fertiliser use that cannot be readily derived from the published standard tabulations. Requests will be via the Authority who will direct the scope of such requests. Procedures for releasing information, in particular taking into account data confidentiality, will need to be agreed with the Authority to ensure that commercially sensitive information for individual growers cannot be inferred. The Contract provides for up to 25 hours per annum for such queries; beyond this enquiries will be dealt with at the agreed hourly rate as directed by the Authority