UK Agricultural Policy Post-Brexit Editor: Will Melling Writers: Bence Borbely, Trevor Chow, Tom Nott, Yang Zuo
3. Soil quality 3.1 Overview The fundamental importance of soil health to farm productivity, food security, climate change and public health has been neglected by governments for far too long 101. Modern intensive agriculture, practiced in the UK since the Second World War and further incentivised by the CAP, has decimated soil quality102. This is a global issue; almost a third of the world’s arable soils have been lost to erosion and pollution over the last 40 years, and it will take hundreds or thousands of years for these degraded soils to recover naturally 103. In the UK, we lose an estimated 2.2 million tonnes of topsoil each year, costing around £45 million per year, of which £9 million is in lost production 104. The depletion of soil nutrients results in lower yields for farmers, sometimes driving higher fertiliser use, which in turn encourages further soil degradation and exacerbates the problem105. This form of intensive agriculture is not sustainable in the long term. Recent statements from UK ministers have not been matched by action106. Soil, perhaps farmers’ most valuable asset continues to be degraded by modern agricultural methods. However, the government’s existing soil commitments provide a starting point for a new UK policy framework. The global 4 per 1000 soil carbon initiative aims to increase soil organic carbon by 0.4% each year and the overall aim is for all English soils to be managed sustainably, with degradation threats tackled successfully, by 2030 107. Effective soil management improves soil quality over the long term and would provide multiple benefits or ‘public goods’. These include: reducing carbon emissions and meeting government climate change targets, increasing the productivity of the soil and long-term viability of farming practices, increasing biodiversity, improving water quality in river catchments, and reducing flood risk. All of these benefits make economic sense; they would save taxpayer money in regeneration or mitigation expenses, increase natural capital, and provide sustainable economic growth.
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The Soil Association, 'The future of British farming outside the EU' (The Soil Association, 20 March 2017) <https://www.soilassociation.org/media/10560/soil-association-report.pdf> accessed 4th January 2021 102 Dieter Helm, Green and Prosperous Land: A Blueprint for Rescuing the British Countryside (Harper Collins 2019) pp224 103 Grantham Centre for Sustainable Futures, 'A sustainable model for intensive agriculture' (2015) p2 <http://grantham.sheffield.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/A4-sustainable-model-intensive-agriculture-spread.pdf> accessed 4 January 2021 104 DEFRA, ‘Safeguarding Our Soils: A strategy for England’ (DEFRA, 2009) <https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/69261/pb132 97-soil-strategy-090910.pdf> accessed 4 January 2021 105 The Soil Association, 'The future of British farming outside the EU' (The Soil Association, 20 March 2017) <https://www.soilassociation.org/media/10560/soil-association-report.pdf> accessed 4th January 2021 106 The Soil Association, 'The future of British farming outside the EU' (The Soil Association, 20 March 2017) <https://www.soilassociation.org/media/10560/soil-association-report.pdf> accessed 4th January 2021 107 The Soil Association, 'The future of British farming outside the EU' (The Soil Association, 20 March 2017) <https://www.soilassociation.org/media/10560/soil-association-report.pdf> accessed 4th January 2021
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