Record retention periods for farms in Germany

Recording is only half of the duty. The other half is retention: plant protection records, fertilisation records, delivery notes for manure, working time records and accounting vouchers must remain available for different lengths of time. The periods are set out in different laws, and they do not all start at the same moment. Anyone who deletes old data when switching software, or throws away paper folders too early, risks gaps during an inspection. This article brings together the most important periods for arable farming, vegetable growing and nurseries in Germany.

Plant protection: at least three years

Article 67 of Regulation (EC) No 1107/2009 requires professional users to keep records of the plant protection products they use for at least three years. The Chamber of Agriculture of North Rhine-Westphalia explains the count with an example: an application from 2025 remains available until the end of 2028 and may be deleted from 2029. The period therefore runs for full calendar years after the year of application.

Extended mandatory details have applied since 2026, and from 1 January 2027 the records must be electronic and machine-readable. For retention this means the data should be kept in a format that can still be opened and filtered in three years, such as CSV or JSON. A PDF alone does not satisfy the machine-readability requirement. Which details belong in the record is described in Plant protection records: required fields.

Fertilisation: seven years

Section 10 of the German Fertiliser Ordinance requires farms to record the fertiliser requirement calculation before applying significant amounts of nutrients, to record every fertiliser application no later than 14 days afterwards, and to prepare the summary under Annex 5 by 31 March of the following year. All of these records must be kept for seven years after the end of the fertilisation year and presented to the authority on request.

Seven years is a long time. A fertiliser application from 2026 remains relevant until the end of 2033. Within that period many farms change computer, software or advisor at least once. Anyone moving away from software that is being discontinued should export the old data completely and store it in a readable form. How to do this for 365FarmNet is explained in How to export your data from 365FarmNet.

Manure: three years from the transaction

Anyone who hands over, transports or receives manure must keep records under section 3 of the Ordinance on the Placing on the Market and Transport of Manure (WDüngV): name and address of the supplier and recipient, date, quantity in tonnes and nitrogen and phosphate content. The record must be made within one month; recipients who use the manure on their own farm have two months. Records are kept for three years from the date of the transaction. If the details already follow from business documents such as delivery notes, no separate records are needed; those documents must then be kept instead.

Plant passports: three years

Businesses that issue plant passports or trade plants that require one are registered under the Plant Health Regulation (EU) 2016/2031. According to the plant protection service of Brandenburg, they must be able to trace for each trade unit who supplied the goods and to whom they were delivered, and they must keep these records for three years. This mainly affects nurseries, young plant producers and fruit farms with their own propagation.

Working time of seasonal staff: two years

Section 17 of the Minimum Wage Act requires employers in the cases it names to record the start, end and duration of daily working time, no later than the end of the seventh calendar day after the work was performed. The records must be kept for at least two years. In agriculture this mainly concerns seasonal workers and mini-jobbers.

Tax documents: six, eight or ten years

Bookkeeping is governed by section 147 of the Fiscal Code. Books, records, inventories, annual accounts and opening balance sheets must be kept for ten years, accounting vouchers for eight years, and business letters received and sent as well as other documents relevant for tax for six years. Each period starts at the end of the calendar year in which the document was created or the last entry was made. Invoices for plant protection products and fertilisers therefore have to be kept longer for tax purposes than the agronomic record itself.

Overview of periods

Federal state rules, funding programmes, water permits and certification schemes such as QS-GAP or GLOBALG.A.P. may set additional or longer periods. If in doubt, check the relevant decision or ask your certification body.

Evidence without a fixed period

For some documents the law does not set its own retention period, but they are requested during inspections. These include the test report from the sprayer inspection and the certificate of plant protection training. In practice it makes sense to keep such evidence at least as long as it is valid and to keep the previous certificate until the next one arrives. More in Sprayer inspection in Germany and Plant protection certificate and training.

Common mistakes

• Old software is cancelled without exporting the records of the last seven years completely.
• Data exists only as PDF and can no longer be filtered or analysed.
• The period is counted from the day of application instead of from the end of the year.
• Manure delivery notes are mixed with fertilisation records and thrown away together after three years.
• Nobody on the farm knows where documents from earlier years are kept.

How to proceed on the farm

1. Take stock: which records does the farm keep, on paper and digitally?
2. Set a period per document: enter the longest applicable period for each type.
3. Secure exports: export data from every software you leave into open formats such as CSV and keep the original files alongside.
4. Organise the archive: file documents by year and type so an inspector can find them quickly.
5. Plan deletion: delete only after the longest period has expired and document what was deleted and when.

Retention in PhytAI

PhytAI calculates the end of retention for each plant protection and fertilisation record and includes it in the export as a "retain until" column: three full calendar years for plant protection, seven for fertilisation. Plant health records are kept with three years. Exports are available as CSV and JSON. Before an organisation can be deleted, PhytAI requires a current export so that documents still under a retention duty are not lost. Tax documents stay in your accounting system.

Frequently asked questions

Is it enough to leave the data with the old provider? Only as long as the provider keeps it available. If a service is discontinued, export beforehand and keep the data yourself.

May I scan paper records and throw them away? For plant protection and fertilisation, what matters is that the records can be presented completely and legibly. Tax documents have their own requirements for digitisation; ask your tax advisor.

Does the seven-year period also apply to small farms? It applies to records that must be kept under section 10 DüV. Farms covered by the exemptions in section 10(3) do not have to keep these records.

Sources

• Federal Ministry of Justice: Section 10 Düngeverordnung, retrieved 17 Sep 2026
• Federal Ministry of Justice: Section 3 WDüngV, retrieved 17 Sep 2026
• Federal Ministry of Justice: Section 147 Abgabenordnung, retrieved 17 Sep 2026
• Federal Ministry of Justice: Section 17 Mindestlohngesetz, retrieved 17 Sep 2026
• Chamber of Agriculture North Rhine-Westphalia: Dokumentationspflicht von Pflanzenschutzmittel-Anwendungen, retrieved 15 Sep 2026
• Plant protection service Brandenburg (ISIP): Registrierung von Unternehmern, retrieved 17 Sep 2026