The Spanish farm notebook: who keeps it and what goes in
Updated: September 2026
The cuaderno de explotación (farm notebook) is the record in which the holder of a farm writes down what happens on the land: what was treated and with what, when, how much fertiliser went on, how much water, and what came off at harvest. It has existed on paper in Spain for years. What changes now is that it becomes electronic, with the same minimum content across the whole country.
Who has to keep one
The holder of the agricultural holding. If you use plant protection products, the European treatment record applies on top of that, and it applies regardless of how big the farm is. There are exceptions and nuances by surface area and crop type, but the working rule is short: if you spray, you record.
The holder answers for the accuracy of what is written. You can hand the work to an adviser, a contractor or an employee. The responsibility does not move with it.
What goes in the cuaderno de explotación
- The holding: holder, NIF (Spanish tax number), and the plots with their recinto (SIGPAC enclosure) and crop.
- Plant protection treatments: the most scrutinised section. Product with its registration number, dose, area treated, the pest or reason, the date, and who applied it with their certificate number.
- Fertilisation: every nutrient application, plus the plan de abonado (fertilisation plan) where one is required.
- Irrigation, sowing and harvest, with dates and quantities.
- Machinery and application equipment, with their registration where it applies.
What an inspection actually looks at
An inspector is not grading your handwriting. Three things get checked:
- That the product was authorised for that crop and that pest, on the date you applied it.
- That the plazo de seguridad (pre-harvest interval) between treatment and harvest was respected.
- That the entry was made in time, and not reconstructed months later.
The first two are checked against the official product register. The third catches the most people. A notebook filled in one sitting in December is obvious to anyone who reads these for a living.
The pre-harvest interval, in one line
The plazo de seguridad is the number of days that must pass between the last treatment and harvest, set product by product and crop by crop. Get it wrong and the crop can be rejected at the buyer's gate, which usually hurts more than the fine. It is the single number worth checking before you spray, not after.
Paper or phone
For treatments, paper stops being acceptable on 1 January 2027. Beyond the legal deadline there is a practical reason to move earlier: recording at the moment, from a phone, standing in the field, is the only thing that makes the notebook accurate. Written up at the kitchen table at night, doses get rounded and dates get invented.
With Agro GPS a job is logged in under thirty seconds, with the product validated before you apply it and the SIGPAC recinto already filled in. It works with no mobile signal and syncs when you get back. Exporting your complete notebook is free, always, including on the day you decide to leave.
If the land is yours but the work is not
Many owners of Spanish farmland live abroad and have a local contractor doing the field work. That is perfectly legal and very common. What catches people out is the paperwork gap: the contractor knows what was applied, the owner holds the obligation, and nobody writes it down within thirty days. Settle that before the season. One shared notebook, entries logged by whoever is standing in the field, visible to whoever signs for it.