28 February

Speaking at the National Farmers Union (NFU) Conference in Westminster on Tuesday the 25th of February, Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Steve Reed announced a number of plans to build food and environmental resilience in the UK, the reopening of capital, productivity grants, funding for innovation and technology, and protecting high environmental and animal welfare standards in future trade deals.

England’s Farming in Protected Landscapes (FiPL) programme has been extended until March 2026 with an additional £30 million of funding. The FiPL programme offers grants for projects which help nature recovery and reduce the impacts of climate change in National Parks and National Landscapes.

The Environment Agency has called on farmers in Devon and Cornwall to take action against soil erosion after pollution incidents almost doubled. Soil erosion causes farmers to lose crops, top soil, organic matter and nutrients, and the Agency has stated that the window to act to prevent it is narrowing.

Nestle has been working with First Milk, a farmer-owned co-operative, to monitor the impact of the regenerative farming incentives which Nestle pays farmers, including a number of payments for actions to improve soil health. The dataset, the first of its kind on this scale, contains detailed information on each field on all 80 of the farms in the First Milk co-operative.

New data relating to land certified to organic Soil Association standards indicates that land in conversion to organic farmland has doubled in the last year. This research follows news that growth in the organic food sector has exceeded non-organic food growth, rising 7.3% to reach £3.7bn in 2024.

Researchers at the John Innes Centre in Norwich have made a breakthrough in endosymbiosis, a biological mechanism that makes plant roots more attractive to soil microbes. By helping crops scavenge soil nutrients through microbial symbiosis, this may lead to a reduction in the amounts of fertilisers required in farms.

A new study conducted by a team of soil scientists at the University of California has found that adaptive multi-paddock (AMP) grazing – a grazing system that involves moving cattle between pastures for short periods of time – is effective at building soil carbon stores and can draw carbon deep into the soil profile.