Why has the UK not got a national soil strategy?
Soil is one of the most amazing and little-understood things on our planet. It is estimated that in one teaspoon of soil there are more micro-organisms than there are people on earth. It is the source of 95% of our food and holds about three times as much carbon as the atmosphere. The UK’s soil stores the equivalent of 80 years of annual greenhouse gas emissions. In short, it is our natural capital.
Given soil’s fundamental importance to food security, carbon storage and biodiversity, it would seem essential to have a coherent strategy for protecting and enhancing this crucial national resource. This is not the case in the UK, with the implications becoming increasingly apparent.
UK agricultural soils are eroding year on year at significant cost. In 2014, soil degradation was estimated to cost approximately £1.2 billion a year, the equivalent to just under £1.6 billion in today’s money. The UK is one of the world's most nature-depleted countries, in the bottom 10% globally and last among the G7 group of nations. Climate change is exacerbating the problem with flooding, extreme rainfall and heat waves - increasing soil erosion, placing even greater pressure on hard-hit farmers and polluting rivers.
The causes of soil deterioration are well-known, including loss of organic matter, erosion, compaction, contamination and sealing through the covering of land for housing, roads or other construction. It is currently virtually impossible to assess the current quality of soil due to the lack of any accurate national data. The government did start to invest in securing this data in the early 1980s but pulled the financial plug. Consequently, the information now sits with a private company behind an expensive paywall. The Environment Agency is seeking to fill this data gap by announcing ‘The Big Soil Stocktake’, aiming to create some benchmarking evidence.
Getting an accurate overall picture of soil quality is undoubtedly complex as circumstances vary significantly across the country. But without it, creating a coherent national approach which drives improvement is highly challenging. The impact of not having such a strategy is significantly harming the UK’s ability to grow food, meet carbon targets and reverse the loss of nature.
Changes in financial drivers and tighter legislation could deliver significant benefits. Providing more financial incentives for farmers to add organic matter to their farms would hit a range of ambitions, as demonstrated by an arable farmer near York who used a carbon calculator on his farm and discovered that by adding just 0.1% of additional organic matter, he turned his farm from a net carbon emitter to a net sequestrator and boosted crop yield.
Research commissioned by Sizzle revealed that using organic waste to generate energy has a subsidy of £33-£58 per tonne. This is awarded by burning or digesting the waste to produce gas. Conversely, a farmer can only receive approximately 10 to 30 pence through the Sustainable Farming Initiative.
The focus on incentivising the use of crops for fuel can have negative impacts on soil quality. For example, maize is being increasingly grown simply for use in digesters to create biofuel. The crop is usually harvested late in the year when the exposed soils are often wet. Bare land and heavy rain create water run-off from the compacted and damaged fields. This simultaneously pollutes waterways with pesticides and nutrients, whilst also reducing the resilience against flooding and causing further flooding.
A lack of a soil strategy provides wriggle room for companies to avoid accountability for their actions. The construction industry is a case in point. A study from Lancaster University highlighted that soil loss from construction sites is just under 30 million tonnes a year, which is 10 times greater than that lost through soil erosion and has a worth of £3 billion a year. This extraordinary volume of waste is allowed to happen as soil on construction sites falls within a gap in DEFRA’s policy and legislation framework.
A national soil plan would enable a strategic view on how best to utilise land use, enabling a balanced discussion on how to safeguard food security with minimal environmental consequences. For example, carbon rich lowland peat soils provide highly productive land for food production with approximately 40% of UK-grown vegetables grown on this soil. However, farming lowland peat is also responsible for the highest carbon emissions per unit area of any land use in the UK. A national strategy would help to have an informed conversation about how best to address competing requirements.
To-date there is little evidence that DEFRA is willing to grasp the nettle and take the required leadership role. This is threatening food security, allowing damaging practices to go unscrutinised, increasing food costs and hitting our ability to deliver on carbon and biodiversity targets. Hopefully as these impacts become more obvious there will be a growing clamour for a change of approach and that this will become a priority for a new government.