Six Facts about UK Soil Policy with Ellen Fay

1. Approaches to soil policy vary across devolved nations

Mechanisms whereby governments, whether central or devolved, formally intervene on soil management tend to fall into three main categories:

• monitoring soil health at the national level, including baselines, indicators, benchmarks and targets
• subsidies or incentives that promote long term improvement
• protections, through regulation – rules defining how soils must be protected or damage or pollution that is not acceptable.

They also provide advice and guidance at different levels in order to underpin the successful outcome of the latter two.

Monitoring and reporting at a national level provides a picture of what state our soils are in, and land managers can then monitor progress and set targets based on that benchmark. This also allows governments to develop other policies around the protection of soil, and resource them with the people, expertise and money to ensure they are delivered.

Under the Common Agricultural Policy, farmers were supported through economic subsidies with amounts calculated according to how much land they farmed, but since Brexit there has been a shift towards replacing these with financial incentives in return for environmental outcomes, including soil health improvement.

Environmental regulations are commonly defined as a formal legal framework for environmental protection. To address soil protection, governments use regulation to require certain actions or approaches aimed at preventing degradation, followed by guidance on remediating harm that’s already been caused. The advice and guidance which often underpins this is a softer approach government can use to intervene. However, soil seldom enjoys its own dedicated protections, being more frequently considered in the light of how it impacts other parts of the environment. Illustrations here are Scotland, where the regulator states “There is a range of legislation which (often indirectly) protects some aspects of soil functions but there is no overarching piece of legislation in place which provides protection for all soils from all threats” and England, which has rules regarding soil within its Farming Rules for Water.

Most environmental policy concerning soil is devolved. Since Brexit, policies affecting soils have been developed at different speeds and with different underlying objectives across the four nations of the UK.

This is because preexisting policies may have been at different stages of development or implementation, and regional challenges have an influence on policy priorities and development. For example, the most pressing threats to soil tend to differ across the UK nations, depending on factors such as farming types and landscapes, so for example while Wales may focus on nitrates, Northern Ireland is more concerned with resolving issues related to phosphorus. Differences are therefore emerging from one country to the next. However, the varied responses of governments seeking to care for and restore soils set a trajectory to a more comprehensive soil policy landscape than that seen in the past few decades, starting with a palpable renewed energy and investment in soil health baselining and monitoring.

2. A potted history of soils policy

To understand the context of UK soil policy, it’s helpful to start with the European Union, as the source of the majority of our farming and environmental policy until recently.

There was a proposal for an EU Soil Health Directive, with such directives being the traditional instrument for unlocking national policy and investment in Europe. This would have necessitated experts’ convergence on a framework of critical definitions, metrics and thresholds for soil health to equip policymakers to set targets, monitor progress and devise other mechanisms by which to fulfil these collective ambitions.

However, the proposed Directive was rejected in 2014 by Member States and remains one of the only European environmental Directives ever to suffer such a fate. The absence of a universal framework in many ways sets the precedent for the soil policy landscape that followed, though in recent years much more structure is emerging.

The origins of the UK’s current approach to the natural environment dates back to 2011, when the Conservative government released a white paper setting out the principles for the establishment of the Natural Capital Committee to advise government on the state of natural capital in England. The ‘natural capital’ approach, whereby nature is understood as an asset which provides benefit to people, and its ability to do so is determined by its quality, quantity and location, has underpinned a lot of environmental policymaking since then.

Our exit from the European Union in 2016 necessitated the creation by all four nations of the UK’s new environmental policies and critically – because as much as 70% of UK soils are managed under agriculture, farming policies [1]. This coincided with reports from the Climate Change Committee showing that agriculture is responsible for around 10% of all greenhouse gas emissions in the UK [2], which generated a sense of both urgency and opportunity around how farming policies could help deliver on climate change targets.

The last few years have seen the four nations establish the foundational policies for farming and environment– both the targets and the mechanism for delivering them. For example, the 2020 Agriculture Bill enabled the government in England to pay farmers to monitor and care for their soils, embedding natural capital thinking in soil policy.

Considerable progress has been made over the last few years with respect to putting soil on the political agenda, identifying the policies that drive improved soil management and the mechanisms for engaging farmers and land managers.

There are some clear steps towards this with examples from the different nations, such as the goals for soil health in England’s 2023 Environmental Improvement Plan, which include a soil health baseline, sustainable management of 40% agricultural soils (rising to 60% later), preventing soil being sent to landfill and securing the integrity of future soil carbon codes.  An important next step will be to ensure that efforts of the four nations align to generate a clear sense of direction which is able to outlast parliamentary cycles.

3. Soil policy is devolved, and context matters

Though development of soil policy has necessarily been varied across the UK, there are some stand-out examples of where governments provide leadership and set parameters in different policy areas by each nation. The concept of leadership here is not only at a national level, these UK government initiatives are perhaps global firsts:

• Northern Ireland’s Soil Health Nutrient Scheme enables the sampling of every single field across the country, paid for by government to create a baseline and understand the detail of soil health.
• England’s Sustainable Farming Incentive specifically pays farmers for actions that protect or improve their soils.
• Scotland is preparing its own sustainable farming scheme, which will pay land managers to sample their soil and to take carbon audits.
• In Wales, soil health is one of the key indicators for the Wellbeing and Future Generations Act which underpins all farming and environmental policy.

Each UK devolved administration has its own challenges when it comes to soil and land use, and therefore how they develop policy around them. Different soil types, landscapes and cultural heritage inform how land is managed and determine both threats and opportunities.

In addition, policy responses are often responsive to regional soil-related crises (for example flooding and erosion in England or nutrient levels impacting freshwater in Northern Ireland) and governments build regulation around the need to mitigate against these contextual factors. Not only that, but there are over 200,000 farms in the UK [3], all of which are unique businesses with a unique set of challenges and activities (and different soil types!), so a ‘one-size fits all’ approach would be difficult to shape and implement and may not be effective.

While each UK nation has different challenges and contextual factors which need to be considered in policy making, a joined-up approach is essential – reflecting the fact that neither nature nor supply chains consider national borders. There are opportunities for collaboration and progress around such things as understandings or definitions of soil degradation or variation, or how to balance fairness for farmers, taxpayers and the environment.

4. You can’t manage what you don’t measure

In 2021, it was demonstrated that in the example of England at that time, soil received just 0.4% of the total invested in monitoring air, water and soil [4]. The lack of an accurate baseline for soil health had made it hard to find a place for soil in national environmental target setting, since you have to know where you’re starting from. More recently, national soil monitoring has become a priority, with England for example building national soil monitoring into its Natural Capital Ecosystem Assessment and developing a national Soil Health Indicator.

Defining how to achieve soil health outcomes and how we go about measuring and monitoring soils is complex. Methods and metrics need to be workable at different scales and reflect the incredible variations of landscapes, farming types, land uses and soil types in the UK.

Having an agreed approach to measuring soil is also important when it comes to tracking the outcomes of the demands we place on soils or any interventions designed to improve or protect them. This is both in terms of evidencing farming incentive schemes to ensure that public money targeted to public good is being spent fairly, but also for measuring the impact of what has come to be referred to as regenerative agriculture and ensuring that it really does deliver for the environment to avoid greenwash, confusion or uninformed investment of energies and resource.

It would also help create a more secure place for soil health on the agendas of businesses outside of farming who seek to address either their impacts on soil health, or to invest in soil health, and help to pay for that transition. An agreed set of indicators which we all measure in the same way will ensure a greater understanding of the direction of travel for our soil. Governments and academia can play an enabling role in coming together to provide this clarity and leadership, supporting others who work with or depend on the soil for their businesses to better play their part in delivering healthy soils.

5. Change is also driven from the bottom up

Healthy soil is a farmer’s greatest asset, but currently they face a myriad of pressures, and financial support is critical. While governments are looking at their vital role in leading the creation and implementation of policies which allow farmers to protect and restore soil, change is also driven by a number of other key players, often filling gaps where policy doesn’t have a logical role.

This is seen most clearly in the growing, bottom-up movement around regenerative agriculture which has been gaining significant momentum in the past years, with events like Groundswell attracting thousands of attendees each year. People from farming, NGOs, the research community and policy makers attend, seeing it as a great opportunity to learn from each other.

Supermarkets, water companies and even the investment community also develop their own soil policies to ensure security in supply chains, the delivery of multiple other ecosystem services and to include soil in their ESG strategies.

Again, it is important that these different forces shaping what is happening to soil converge around a harmonised approach to measuring soil outcomes and soil health. This would maximise the potential of regenerative agriculture for different purposes (government and industry), putting it on a stronger footing for the long haul and helping create a more secure place for soil health on the agendas of businesses outside of farming seeking to address their soil impacts or invest in soil health for other reasons.

6. Soil isn’t just about farming

 It’s important to remember that there are other actors who are directly involved in managing soil aside from farmers. For example, the construction industry has a huge impact on soil by sealing it over, moving it and disposing of it. In fact, soil from construction sites makes up a staggering 58% of material going to landfill [5]. In terms of soil carbon balances, soil carbon losses from construction sites are over 6 million tonnes per year [6]. Defra, for example, is taking steps to update industry guidance here and enable more recycling of soils. There is also an opportunity to enable the sector through more education and communication to reduce these statistics. The scientific community, driven by government, has an important role to play in updating and publicising these impacts, all part of the process of avoiding their continuation. And again, it is important that we have a cohesive approach to soil assessment and monitoring that practitioners can engage with, learn from and build into their operations.

[1] Department for Food, Agriculture and Rural Affairs, 2021

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6331b071e90e0711d5d595df/AUK_Evidence_Pack_2021_Sept22.pdf

[2] The Climate Change Committee, 2012

https://www.theccc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Agriculture.pdf

[3] Department for Food, Agriculture and Rural Affairs, 2021 https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6331b071e90e0711d5d595df/AUK_Evidence_Pack_2021_Sept22.pdf

[4] Sustainable Soils Alliance, 2020

https://sustainablesoils.org/images/pdf/FOIdocx.pdf

[5] Department for Food, Agriculture and Rural Affairs, 2023

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/uk-waste-data/uk-statistics-on-waste

[6] Soils in Planning and Construction Taskforce, 2022

https://wp.lancs.ac.uk/sustainable-soils/files/2022/09/Soils-in-Planning-and-Construction-Sept-22.pdf