Soil Health
Incentivisation Carbon Offsets New Landscape Promised the Earth SFI Pitfalls NEIRF
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SHAPE launched. Soil Health Action Plan announced in House of Lords. SHAPE "will provide a framework of actions to improve and protect the health of our soils. A further announcement regarding the details will be made shortly and we plan to consult on the draft outline in Spring 2022.
BIG ANNOUNCEMENT !!!
The government introduced 'Soil Standards' in August 2021 to its Sustainable Farming Initiative (SFI)
Government votes down Lords Amendment to put soil centre stage of the Environment Bill. MPs rejected Baroness Bennett's amendment 20 October, with its own long-term target to secure its recovery, in line with the government’s decision to vote down all amendments. The Soil Association said MPs had "missed a crucial opportunity to take the role of soils in the climate crisis seriously". Details why government voted down 'Amendment 2' from Minister Rebecca Pow
Chief of UK’s Climate Change Committee says - in relation to government's ‘Net Zero Strategy’: “We still haven’t had a proper programme for land use. You’ve actually got to have trees, you’ve got to have soil. The missing bit of it is the land use programme”
Soil Health Law to be introduced in EU in 2023. to significantly improve the state of soils by 2050 and to protect soils on the same legal basis as air and water." EU opens up consultation on posible Soil Health Law "The EU Soil Strategy for 2030 adopted on 17 November 2021, sets the vision to have all soils in healthy condition by 2050 and to make protection, sustainable use and restoration of soils the norm. It also announces that the Commission will table a new legislative proposal on soil health providing a comprehensive legal framework for soil protection granting it the same level of protection that exists for water, the marine environment and air in the EU." Rememebr the UK refused to include soil targets like for water and air in its new Environmental Act 21.
There is a lot of talk about the importance of soil, how we have failed to recognise its importance and how that should be put right, especially in regard to global warming. BBC Jan 2020
'Soil Health' Sus Soils Alliance
25 yr plan. Grounds for Optimism or Barren Landscape?
Some environmental solutions will be hard to define. Take soil: the government wants to conserve soil because it improves productivity and captures planet-heating carbon emissions. But Prof. Jane Rickson from Cranfield University asks: “What soil properties should be measured and monitored? Different soils will have naturally variable levels of soil carbon, irrespective of how they are managed.” Prof. Rickson said an alternative approach is to ignore measurement of soil properties and reward farmers for farming in ways that typically improve soil carbon, such as reduced ploughing, planting “cover crops” that hold soil together in winter, and grass buffer strips to catch soil running off fields in the rain.
But DEFRA have said that they are NOT funding practices like soil rotation
We've already got rid of Ecological Focus Areas which did some of that -because of the 'red tape' and EU research that found it was only about 5% effetive. So we ditched measures to improve soil health and the wider environment, while the EU used the same report as the base to being 'more effective'..
Defra has decided not to reward improved soil health as a natural asset, instead subsidies will pay out what you may have earned if you hadn't done somthing green
How will ELMS reward soil health, or carbon storing?
In 2017, Secretary of State Michael Gove pledged to do more to tackle the problem of degraded soils and in the ‘Health and Harmony’ consultation preceding the Agriculture Bill he specifically name-checked improved soil health as a public good which could be rewarded after Brexit.The report went out of its way to criticise the EU because it "failed to reward some public goods adequately, such as measures to improve water quality and soil health".
Since then DEFRA have said that the soil is not a public good - but a 'natural asset from which public goods flow’ when they refused to fund a trial that focussed on increased crop rotation. The government made it clear that soil was NOT a public good in its own right. We thought 'public goods' meant things goods we could all enjoy, but clearly the government considers 'goods' are 'commodities'.
At a Party Parliamentary Group meeting in Westminster (April 2), the GWCT’s (involved with this trial along with Soil Association) head of policy Dr Alastair Leake said: “I am sorry, but I do not feel this is the direction we need to be going in. We should surely provide some incentive for soil health. Not so long ago we paid farmers to put 15 per cent of their land into set aside. It is not a big leap to get farmers to put 15 per cent of their land into soil-restoring crops."
If soils are assets from which goods flow, we are in for a tricky time as our assets are much diminished.
Natural Capital Committee (p57-61) in its final response (Oct '20) to 25 yr Environmental Programme concluded:
“The overall assessment of the soils asset, based on the datasets available, is ‘Red’: deteriorating. There are no firm, legally binding commitments in the 25 YEP or elsewhere for the improvement of the condition and extent of soils. A starting point would be to undertake an England-wide measurement of soil carbon.”
Long wait then...
The Scottish and Welsh Governments, use soil carbon as an ecosystem health indicator and a wellbeing indicator respectively. Additionally, there is industrial interest in carbon sequestration for the purpose of offsetting and policy engagement through the 4 per 1000 initiative.
We are miles off ways to reward farmers for improving soil health. We have not even got the starting point, let alone ways to measure indicators that show progress towards targets, which may help carbon offsetting policies. Nothing.
They Promised the Earth in detail
Targets
Targets
There were expected to be targets for soil health in the 2018 version of this Bill. Where have they gone?
Long term targets are required in Environment Bill for air, water, biodiversity & waste but soil is comprehensively overlooked. I urge the government to rectify this. There is a New Office of Environmental Protection, to hold the government to account on environmental standards -but that wont include soil standards.
One of the big priorities of the bill is soil. Erosion rates from ploughed fields are between ten and 100 times greater than rates of soil formation. As a result, the UK faces a crisis of food security within our lifetimes. 'The government will reward farmers who protect and improve soil quality with measures like crop rotation, and give ministers new powers to regulate fertiliser use and organic farming'. Curious about 'crop rotation' as Andrea Leadsom Env Minister & Brexiteer promised to scrap in 2017 the EU's 3 crop rule - see 'rotation' box
'Cross compliance' includes standards that introduced basic levels of protection in spheres that are not covered by domestic UK legislation e.g. protecting soils.
Soil Association says the bill "does not commit to support farmers to adopt nature friendly agro-ecological farming, like organic, or environmental action across the whole farm, rather than in small areas" Agroecology is mentioned in the Bill: “better understanding of the environment” includes better understanding of agroecology". ie wherever going for funds for 'environment', that can include 'agroecology'.
The director of the Sustainable Soils Alliance said more detail would be needed on how to implement measures to protect soil health, “The commitment for all soils to be sustainably managed by 2030 is now 10 years old. For this to be achieved, an ambitious strategy linking all the policy mechanisms – education, regulation, assessment and incentivisation – with clear milestones for delivery, is urgently needed.”
*Difficult to find what government is actually saying about soil - looking into to it. Explanatory notes say
"enable the Secretary of State to provide financial assistance for protecting or improving the quality of soil. This could include measures which support farmers with decision making and soil management to improve soil health, such as assistance for soil monitoring programmes and funding of necessary soil health research to provide baseline site-specific understanding of soil properties. This power could also be used to incentivise farmers to invest in practices which protect and enhance soil health. "
Looking for more detail re soil health other than fertiliser control. Trying to work out whether these new fertiliser controls just replace EU Nitrate Vulnerable Zones (NVZs) NVZs raise concerns for NFU about the use of closed periods for slurry spreading. Their water officer called for the introduction of slurry store grants to help farmers to comply with NVZ rules, but said longer term, Brexit provided an opportunity to do things differently."
It looks like whole of Wales may become an NVZ
IS SOIL A PUBLIC GOOD? Most of us think so. But apparently not, according to DEFRA who consider soil is a 'natural asset from which public goods flow'. So DEFRA do not consider healthy soil, in itself, is a public good.
Rotation
Rotation
Most agricultural scientists agree the best way to look after your soil and deal with pests is 'rotation' 'rotation' 'rotation'. This has been practised for hundreds of years successfully, but dies out in UK in 1990s.
The blurb with the AG bill says "The government will reward farmers who protect and improve soil quality with measures like crop rotation.."
Great ! SO why did the same government, pushed by the NFU, try and scrap an EU law called '3 crop rule'. Farmers with more than 30h of land have to grow three crops. It makes them rotate. This intended to promote bio-diversity and end the reliance of large-scale farmers on single, ‘monoculture’, crops.
Andrea Leadsom, then Agriculture Minister made it her priority to get the law scrapped. At the Oxford Farming Conference in 2017 she said "it as simply “ridiculous, bureaucratic”. In my book Bittersweet Brexit p111, I mentioned that I didnt think she was looking at the science, more at her Brexit credentials
More on Soil Health Indicators in my Soil Animals site
Meanwhile back in the EU farmers and forester to be rewarded for looking after carbon in soils This is part of their Farm to Fork strategy Food & Soil Health Mission
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