17 May 2024

The 2024 Farm to Fork Summit was held at Downing Street this week, where a package of new measures was introduced to help improve food security, including new investment to boost innovation and a new Food Security Index. Nature charities WWF and The Wildlife Trusts have criticised Rishi Sunak for not inviting more environmental charities to the Summit, saying that their exclusion shows they are ‘tone deaf’ to the risk food systems present to nature. 

It was announced this week that the Welsh Sustainable Farming Scheme is to be delayed by a year. The Basic Payment Scheme replacement was due to be phased in from April 2025, however the Welsh government has said that further ‘meaningful engagement’ is needed with farming groups to work out some of the issues which led to farmer protests earlier in the year.

New figures from the Department of Food, Environment and Rural Affairs (Defra) show that the number of Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) agreements in place has reached almost 14,000. The agreements, which include actions for improving soil health, now cover over 2 million hectares of land.

Online supermarket Ocado have teamed up with the Soil Association to set up five demonstration farms which promote nature-friendly farming methods. The five farms will each focus on a different area of farming, and will host training sessions on topics including soil quality and crop rotations to help farmers share knowledge and improve practices.

It has been warned that saturated soils could hamper tree planting ambitions in the UK. As rainfall is predicted to increase with the changing climate, soils will become more saturated, which in some areas could impact survival rates of certain tree species. The study highlights the importance of considering soil conditions when designing tree planting schemes.

A UK producer of organic fertiliser has created a new fish-based fertiliser which can enhance soil microbial activity. The fertiliser, made by fermenting fish which isn’t fit for human consumption, is rich in nutrients, amino acids and organic matter, and was shown during testing to increase microbial biomass by 85% and organic matter by 27%.

A farm in the Scottish borders has described how they purify drinking water before watering their compost in order to boost soil health. Chemicals found in the mains water supplies can kill bacteria the farm needs to propagate to improve soil conditions, hence purifying the water which results in compost that's richer in biodiversity, helping increase farm resilience.

New research has shown that a herd of 170 bison recently reintroduced to Romania have the potential to help capture 54,000 tonnes of carbon per year – equivalent to removing 43,000 petrol cars from the roads. They do so by recycling nutrients which fertilise soil, grazing grasslands evenly and compacting the soil to stop the release of carbon.