Soil Health Monitoring
A Fraction of the budget is spent on soils in England despite importance for combatting floods and boosting food security, the Sustainable Soils Alliance warns.
The government has been accused of neglecting soil health in England and thereby potentially heightening the risks of flood, food insecurity, and biodiversity loss, after a freedom of information request revealed it spends just a fraction of its environmental monitoring budget on enhancing and protecting soils.
The Sustainable Soils Alliance (SSA) said it found just 0.41 per cent of England's total environmental monitoring budget was spent on soil health monitoring in 2017-18, amounting to just under £284,000 that year. In contrast, multi-million pound budgets were assigned to monitoring air and water quality across the UK.
More than £60m was spent on monitoring water quality in England, and another £7.65m on monitoring air quality, the SSA's Freedom of Information request revealed, prompting the non-profit group to accuse the government of failing to give soil health the attention it needs.
With an estimated 2.2 to 2.9 million tonnes of topsoil eroded each year, it said the nation was facing a "soils crisis" with implications for food security, urban settlements, wildlife, and climate mitigation.
SSA director Ellen Fray slammed the "staggering but unfortunately not surprising" level of investment in soil monitoring, and urged the government to urgently improve data collection in order to help combat the deterioration of UK soils.
"It reflects the widespread underinvestment in soil health compared to air and water, despite soil's significant environmental importance - not least as a determinant of the health of these other two factors," she said. "We could be actually saving money - and the environment - by investing in soil monitoring because understanding soil would tell us a great deal about the health of our water and air too," she argued.
The news comes amid growing concern about the health of soils both in the UK and worldwide. The UN has estimated the world may only have an estimated 60 harvests left on average before soils are too degraded to feed the global population, while a 2014 study concluded there may only be 100 harvests left in the UK.
The government's 25 Year Environment Plan published in 2018 includes a firm commitment to achieving sustainable soil management by 2030, and the proposed Agriculture Bill that is currently working its way through Parliament also places an onus on the need for farmers to enhance soil quality in view of its range of benefits for flood resilience, carbon capture, and food production.
Campaigners hope the government's planned system of linking farming subsidy payments to environmental services could ensure farmers are better incentivised to improve soil management.
