A new report
published by the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE), calls for a radical
rethink of soil management in order to help regenerate the soils that underpin
our environment.
It sets out
practical ways to restore soil and new approaches to policy.
Soil provides many
benefits to the health of humans as well as our landscapes and wider
environment. It is not only fundamental to the production of food, but it also
filters and stores excess water in the ground and absorbs carbon dioxide from
the atmosphere, making it critical in the fight against climate change.
However, CPRE points
out that a combination of industrial farming practices, poor land management
and damage from development have created a perfect storm that has resulted in
dangerous levels of soil erosion, compaction and a loss of soil’s fertility – this
degradation of soil costs around £1.2 billion a year, in England and Wales
alone.
Graeme Willis,
senior rural policy campaigner at the Campaign to Protect Rural England, said:
"Soil must be seen as a fundamental asset for delivering productive
farming and a healthy countryside. For far too long we have been ignoring the
fragility of such a precious commodity. Only now is the Government starting
address the damage decades of neglect has caused.
"Ensuring our
soils are healthy is crucial if we are to effectively tackle climate change –
or mitigate its worst effects."
Damage from
development is a major threat to health of England’s soils, says the report.
Based on current annual rates of land lost to development, CPRE warns that
1,580km2 of
farmland – an area the size of Greater London – will be lost within a decade.
In addition to
killing soil by sealing it with concrete or tarmac, development projects also
excavate tens of millions of tonnes of soil every year, much of which is
treated as waste.
The most recent data
highlighted in the report shows that in 2014, in the UK, more than 20 million
tonnes of soil was sent to landfill – equivalent to the weight of more than 400
Titanics – and that almost half (45%) of all ‘waste’ buried in the same year
was soil.
CPRE warns that, in
order to effectively address climate change and limit global temperature rises
to 1.5°C in the timeframes set out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC), urgent action is needed to halt the degradation and loss of our
soils.
In the UK, soil
stores roughly 10 billion tonnes of carbon – the equivalent of 70 years of
annual UK greenhouse gas emissions. However, degradation has led to most arable
soils having already lost 40-60% of their organic carbon. Preventing the loss
of greenhouse gases from soils and rebuilding their carbon stores means that
better farming and land use will be crucial in our attempt to limit the worst
effects of climate change.
If properly managed,
soils could help to reduce the flooding and erosion that more frequent extreme
weather could bring. However, if continued to be managed badly, soils will lack
the resilience to cope with storms or drought, CPRE fears.
The report sets out
five innovative, yet practical, solutions that would reduce the degradation and
loss of soil, and help to regenerate them through sustainable management.
