06 September
England’s nature-friendly farming budget is to be cut by £100 million to help combat a £22 billion treasury shortfall. Civil servants have blamed the cuts on an underspend of the £2.4 billion farming budget, which cover for funding for Environment Land Management Schemes (ELMs) which pay farmers to implement nature friendly farming practices. The RSPB estimates that these cuts will result in 239,000 fewer hectares of nature-friendly farmland.
The Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs of Northern Ireland (DAERA) have extended the application deadline for Zone 3 of the Soil Nutrient Health Scheme (SNHS) to the 6th of September 2024. DAERA hopes that the extended deadline will enable more farmers and land stewards to access soil analysis information which will help to match nutrient application with crop needs more accurately.
Following years of high food price volatility, think tank Policy Exchange has called for the creation of a national food security strategy that includes policy interventions at all stages of the agricultural supply chain. The think tank identifies the need to couple upstream soil regulation with a robust contingency framework for food supply crises in order to create a climate-resilient food supply chain.
Forbes have shared an article describing the importance of soil to human and ecosystem health. The article reviews research into the link between healthy soil and the nutritional value of food, and explores some of the regulatory ecosystem functions provided by soil. The article concludes with 7 steps to improve soil connection, ranging from daily actions, such as composting, to political advocacy for soil health.
Sustain has published a call to arms in response to the new government’s proposed review of the National Planning Policy Framework. The article outlines how reforms to this policy may result in the aggressive expansion of harmful agribusinesses and urges its stakeholders to tell the government to prioritise food security, pollution, and sustainable farming while updating national planning rules.
An article in The Conversation has described how the addition of biochar to soil helps improve drought resilience, as well as storing carbon. Biochar has the potential to store significant amounts of soil and is made by heating organic matter in low oxygen, and new research has shown that a single kilo of biochar can hold up to 4 litres of water, meaning that biochar-improved soil can increase drought resistance.
New research from the Natural History Museum has shown pollution to be the leading cause of decline in underground species. The findings demonstrate that drivers of above-ground biodiversity loss are not the same as those impacting below-ground organisms, and the lead researchers have highlighted that more research into the long-term impact of this pollution is required.
Country Living’s deep-dive on Chef Dan Cox sheds light on the soil-centric farming which lies behind his Michelin-starred restaurant ‘Crocadon Farm’. The restaurant is supplied by its adjacent 120-acre farm which supports soil health through a range of regenerative agricultural practices. Chef Cox describes how the use of diverse cover crops, mycorrhizal symbiosis, grazing ruminants and crop rotation has helped to restore soil health while providing award-winning produce for his restaurant.
A video game developed by students in Dundee is to be used to educate people on soil and land use. The students worked with the Scottish Ecological Design Association (SEDA) and the James Hutton Institute to develop the game, which is set in Scotland’s northeast and is inspired by Pictish history, and aims to highlight the impact of different forms of production on soil health.