30 August

Following last week’s announcement of the updated Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) offer for 2024, the Department for Food, Environment and Rural Affairs (Defra) have shared a document summarising the changes. The summary explains the changes made to each SFI action within the longer 400+ page offer, as well as consolidating the general updates which apply to all SFI actions.

Money ringfenced for nature restoration in Scotland is being re-allocated to settle wage settlements. £5 million of the £29.2 million Nature Restoration Fund, which has supported over 140 projects since 2021, is being taken to fund a local government pay offer. The Nature Restoration Fund projects aiming to protect Scotland’s biodiversity, and includes projects working to expand woodlands and protect rivers.

The Guardian has shared another article describing the positive impact of Environmental Land Management (ELM) schemes following the Labour government’s refusal to commit to the long-term funding of the programme. The article includes the perspective of farmer Abby Allen, who is glad to have funding for her environmental projects and says that ELM schemes allow her to test and monitor her soil to prove that actions are making a difference.

Supermarket chain Sainsbury’s has expanded its partnership with The Woodland Trust to support farmers to implement agroforestry while maintaining food production. The programme will give farmers access to land-mapping tools to help them predict benefits such as soil health and biodiversity improvement. The announcement is part of a commitment by the supermarket to plant an extra 1.5 million trees by the end of 2025.

An arable farm in Leicestershire is selling credits generated from carbon captured in its soil to a Formula 1 team. Credits generated thanks to the farm’s regenerative methods were analysed and verified before being listed on the Regen Network platform and were bought by the Mercedes team to help offset their emissions.

An article in The Conversation has discussed how human waste from festival sites could be negatively impacting soil health. Temporary festival facilities often overflow, meaning that waste can flow into fields, releasing phosphorus and nitrogen into the soil. The author describes how people skipping the loos at festivals could cause excess nitrogen to enter the ground and then be re-released into the atmosphere, and could alter the pH of soils.

Scientists analysing lunar soil have developed a method to produce clean water from samples. Their research demonstrates a method whereby lunar soil is heated with mirrors to produce water. It is thought that the method, when scaled, could produce 50 kilograms of water per ton of lunar soil, allowing a source of drinking water and plant irrigation and a potential for human habitation on the moon.

A team of researchers in Texas are trialling a way to replace soils with crushed recycled glass to grow vegetables. The research saw crushed and smoothed recycled glass, shaped to mimic the qualities of natural soil, replace soil to assess its impact on growing. Early results show that plants grew faster and retained more water, and that a ratio of over 50% glass to soil is the most productive.