THE SECRET LIES IN THE SOIL

 

THE SECRET LIES IN THE SOIL

Landworker magazine article 

Many agricultural experts – including Unite’s food security and soil scientist, Dr Charlie Clutterbuck,  believe soil quality is critical for the future of the UK’s food supply.

Experts have welcomed the government’s decision to pay farmers to improve it for the first time.

But doubts still remain over how soil quality will be assessed, the mechanism for paying farmers and whether there are sufficient scientists and research facilities to provide farmers with advice.

Following Brexit, the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy farm subsidies are being phased out and replaced with the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) scheme, to be introduced next year.

According to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), the SFI is “centred around incentivising sustainable farming practices alongside profitable food production and rewarding farmers for producing public goods such as better air and water quality, protecting wildlife and improving soil health”.

The plans also include under the government’s 25-year Environment Plan a net zero carbon ambition.

But as Landworker readers know all too well ‘profitable food production’ will always trump sustainable farming.

Soil quality and biodiversity supports agricultural production and the storage of carbon. But almost 4 million hectares of soil in England and Wales are at risk of compaction, according to the Environment Agency, and 2 million hectares are at risk of erosion.

Intensive agriculture has caused arable soils to lose 40-60 per cent of their organic carbon, said the Environment Agency in July. But it added that there is insufficient data on soil health and called for investment in monitoring.

Farmers can sign up to SFI schemes to improve arable and horticultural soils at payments between £30 and £59 per hectare and grassland soils at £6-£8 per hectare. Under the EU basic payments subsidies scheme farmers received £230 per hectare.

“Not only is the money that once went direct to farmers being replaced by the SFI but half of this funding, £2bn, will be cut and replaced by schemes that the government has yet to announce, based on the new natural environment investment readiness fund (NEIRF),” commented Clutterbuck.

Clutterbuck is himself part of the Ribble Valley consortium NEIRF bid led by the Larder Project in Preston, which includes key organisations like the NFU.

. NEIRF will provide natural capital grants of between £10,000 and £100,000 to “people interested in tackling climate change, creating and restoring habitats or improving water quality”. Again, no mention of food.

Clutterbuck said much of the money on the bid he worked on is set aside for consultants at £500- £600 a day.

 “These consultants will be focused on attracting large scale funding, whereas in the past farmers big or small got direct payments. Jobs will be lost.”

Clutterbuck fears that attracting large-scale private sector investment will mean large scale landscape picture box projects rather than a working countryside.

 “As such,” he continued, “ a good number are likely to be rewilding and tree plantation projects, neither of which will, after an initial boost, provide long-term employment for local people. “

 According to a Defra spokesperson: “Healthy soil is key to supporting our targets on the environment and improving farm profitability. Well managed soils can lead to increased biodiversity, increased carbon sequestration and storage, improved water quality and flood prevention.”

Yet there are actually no specific soil targets in the Environment Act. When the Lords sought - through an amendment at the Bill stage - to include legally binding targets government the minister in charge, Rebecca Pow, admitted it did “not yet have the reliable metrics needed to set a robust target …. and to measure its progress.” The Tories refused to accept the amendment.

Instead, there is to be a Soil Health Action Plan (SHAPE) to develop indicators, methodology and monitoring. SHAPE will provide  a ‘strategic direction’ but there is no completion target. There has previously been hardly any monitoring on soil quality and in 2020, England spent just £283,780. This compared to £60.5 million on monitoring water quality and £7.65 million on air.

 In response, Luke Pollard, shadow rural affairs secretary, said, “Improving soil health is a vital goal, but without establishing a comprehensive environmental baseline, as we suggested during the passage of the Agriculture Act, it will be hard to measure and achieve.”

Clutterbuck believes monitoring soil quality should begin with “an England-wide measurement of soil carbon”, a legally binding commitment to improving soil quality and investment in more research facilities.

In response a Defra spokesperson said it was planning a “comprehensive programme of soil monitoring across farms participating in the early roll-out. The first stage will be establishing a baseline for a range of soil health indicators.”

 The spokesperson added, “There is a wealth of expertise in soil health within the UK including scientists from the University of Lancaster and UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology.”

 Many land research facilities were lost after Margaret Thatcher drew a line between ‘pure’ research, that would be publicly funded, and ‘practical/applied’ research that would be funded by industry. With agriculture being an applied science there thus began a long decimation of land-based research facilities. Three quarters of research stations and many unionised, highly skilled jobs have gone as Britain moves steadily towards importing ever more of its food.

Universities are, at least, now looking to set up additional research and accompanying facilities to help farmers seeking to improve soil quality. A Plymouth University spokesperson said, “We have recently developed new modes of study in this area through our accredited degrees in regenerative farming, with specific modules dedicated to the study of soil health and the range of methods for improving soil quality. Building on the continued success and popularity of our 6-month sustainable horticulture residency at Schumacher College, and the complimentary online course in sustainable growing, we are now increasing this provision through the MSc in Regenerative Food, Farming and Enterprise starting in January, and the BSc in September. “

Felicity Crotty, senior lecturer in soil science at the Royal Agricultural University, also welcomed moves to improve soil quality but warned that testing every field “would be expensive and not every farmer knows how much carbon is in their soil.

We do research on soil health, teach a couple practical modules on soil and environmental science and sustainable soil, and water management. We take the students out into the field and they learn about how to do a visual examination of soil structure, learn about the importance of soil biology and monitoring earth worm numbers.

“We would hope to do more in the field of soil health and with everyone talking about it then you’d expect there would be great government funding in the future,” she added.

Crucially, Clutterbuck has calculated that Britain, which currently imports half its food, could reduce this to around 25-30 per cent through better land management and improving soil content. In turn, this would mean more rural jobs plus many countries that currently export to Britain could begin to grow food for their own people, many of whom go hungry.

“We need that better soil to produce more local produce to regenerate rural communities and not fund carbon offset schemes that benefit the City,” added Clutterbuck.

SFI will be phased in over seven years, while in the next three years farmers will lose half their former EU subsidies. They mean more to smaller northern hill farmers, earning around £25,000 annually, than larger farmers on richer plains. We understand there are many farmers who have worked for generations, are now being offered incentives to quit the land.

But this quite appalling state of affairs is at odds with Boris Johnson’s promise, made in 2016 at a cattle market in Clitheroe, that farmers would get the same amount of money – “100% guaranteed” – from subsidies after leaving the EU, while being relieved of red tape.

Clearly this is not the case. The first SFI schemes will start in the spring.  But according to environmental law expert Richard Smith, “few farmers have signed up to the new programme”.

This has not surprised Pollard. He said, “We have long warned that the new Environmental Land Management schemes, including the SFI, are over-complicated and that many farmers will find them hard to access – that is being borne out by experience as we have seen numbers coming forward to take part in tests and trials falling far short of Government predictions.”

A Defra spokesperson said it was planning a “comprehensive programme of soil monitoring across farms participating in the early roll-out. The first stage will be establishing a baseline for a range of soil health indicators.”

And the way forward? Last words go to Dr Charlie Clutterbuck.

“The labour movement should be supporting plans to improve soil health as that can provide jobs in research and advisory roles, plus it would mean training to proper vocational standards. It could be part of a programme to regenerate rural affairs by creating many more land based jobs as I sought to outline in my 2017 book BITTERSWEET BREXIT – the future of food, farming, land and labour.” Charlie is available to speak at labour and trade union meetings and can be contacted on charlie@sustainablefood.com