Recommendations and conclusions 36 shown
Recommendation · First Report - Soil health · Addressed to Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs
Recommended (the committee's words)
We are pleased that the Government is developing a set of soil health indicators and a soil health baseline. Data, and a common approach to measuring soil health, is essential for setting targets, tracking progress, evaluating the ELM schemes and understanding the merits of different interventions. The Government should develop these as soon as possible, particularly the soil health indicators which will underpin future policy development. Soil monitoring must also not be a “one-off exercise”: soils will always be a vital natural asset and changes to soil health can take place over many years.
Recommendation · First Report - Soil health · Addressed to Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs
Recommended (the committee's words)
The Government must ringfence the funding for the soil health monitoring programme to ensure a long-term commitment to this precious national resource. This funding should be on the same scale as funding for the monitoring of other critical assets such as water and air quality. The Government should also finalise the soil health indicators by December 2024 at the latest.
Conclusion · First Report - Soil health · Addressed to Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs
Concluded (the committee's words)
The soil health baseline will not be established until 2028 and determining trends from that data will potentially take longer still. Given the importance of soil health, we feel it is essential to take steps now to use existing soil data and identify priority areas of concern. Furthermore, unlike the Minister, we believe that comparing soil data is helpful at an individual farm level and that this data is vital for assessing the impact of ELMs. The Government’s Natural Capital and Ecosystem Assessment Programme should therefore be more ambitious and aim to collect more detailed, granular data to support land managers and inform future policy development. ELMs—as well as benefitting from more thorough data—could also be an effective mechanism for funding, standardising and collecting such field-level data. We are not convinced that guidance alone will be enough to sufficiently standardise soil tests and assessments around agreed metrics. However, this must be done in such a way to alleviate privacy concerns and avoid additional administrative burdens.
Conclusion · First Report - Soil health · Addressed to Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs
Concluded (the committee's words)
By 2025, Defra should adapt the Environmental Land Management schemes to fund the testing and assessment of all key physical, chemical and biological soil attributes decided by the soil health indicators project. These schemes should only support tests that are easy to use, cost-effective, and meet an approved standard, to collect more robust and comparable data. This must involve working with industry on suitable tests and assessments and collaborating with supply chain assurance standards to ensure farmers need only produce data for one common set of soil health tests. The ELM schemes should incorporate mechanisms to feed publicly funded data back into the soil health monitoring programme. This data and analysis should be anonymised, aggregated, secured and not be used to monitor progress on individual farms.
Recommendation · First Report - Soil health · Addressed to Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs
Recommended (the committee's words)
In order to gain an insight into recent trends, the Government should also, by 2026, commission and publish an analysis of existing soil health data held by third parties This should be used to inform future policy development, including incoming iterations of ELM schemes.
Conclusion · First Report - Soil health · Addressed to Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs
Concluded (the committee's words)
There is a lack of leadership and focus on soil health in Government policy. The awaited land use framework could certainly help but, given that the Environmental Improvement Plan (EIP) and the Environment Act targets are already the central focus of policy and scrutiny, we believe that it would be better to also focus these targets on soils, giving them equal status to air and water and therefore encouraging better integration of these interdependent elements of the environment. The next update of the EIP is due by 2028, a date by which a baseline map of soil health should be ready. This presents a perfect opportunity to update the EIP and the Environment Act targets to better incorporate soils; and for the Government to refine its target to get more soils under “sustainable management.”
Recommendation · First Report - Soil health · Addressed to Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs
Recommended (the committee's words)
By May 2024, the Government must publish the new National Action Plan for Sustainable Use of Pesticides and its Land Use Framework. The Framework should provide clear guidance and leadership to stakeholders on the most effective uses for types of soils, and the trade-offs between different outcomes, such as increased biodiversity and improved food security. Once established, the Land Use Framework should be frequently updated to incorporate the latest data and also should be integrated into other government incentive schemes, such as ELMs, to reward sustainable decision- making.
Recommendation · First Report - Soil health · Addressed to Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs
Recommended (the committee's words)
Once a soil baseline and health indicators are in place, the Government must work with industry and academia to develop a set of binding and measurable targets for improving soil health in England, based primarily on the agreed soil health indicators, and giving a clear but realistic indication of how the use of agricultural inputs will be reduced over time. By the end of 2028, the Government should have amended the Environment Act 2021 section 1, subsection 3 to explicitly mention soil health, put soil on an equal, harmonised footing with water and air, and to bind future governments to these targets.
Conclusion · First Report - Soil health · Addressed to Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs
Concluded (the committee's words)
The 2028 Environmental Improvement Plan should incorporate and develop these new soil health targets and ensure that soil improvement features across all related sectors, particularly construction, planning and agriculture. Goals for biodiversity, waste, food security, land use and net zero should ensure that soil health plays a role in their delivery. The EIP should also aim for nearly all farmers and growers (90% or more) to be part of an ELM scheme by 2040, and work with the agricultural sector to develop clear, reasonable and measurable definitions of “sustainable soil management” within ELMs, which are adaptable to different contexts and that all participants should be strongly incentivised to adopt.
Conclusion · First Report - Soil health · Addressed to Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs
Concluded (the committee's words)
The Government’s Environmental Land Management (ELM) schemes are an important economic incentive to protect and restore natural assets, such as soils. Until private ecosystem marketplaces are fully regulated and established for a variety of soil health benefits, ELM schemes will be the main tool for encouraging the restoration of soil health. Most stakeholders believe that paying for sustainable practices is the right approach, although effective regulation and evaluation will be essential to ensure that they deliver the right outcomes. Attractive payment rates will also be crucial, rates many believe to be too low at present. Higher rates that reflect environmental benefits and additional costs could boost take-up, lead to further savings in the longer term, keep ELMs true to the ‘public money for public goods’ philosophy, and keep the Government on track to meet its targets. ELMs also do not, in general, address the capital investment barriers to more sustainable farming, although we recognise that some grant funding has been made available. The Government needs to keep a careful eye on this problem and come up with solutions if needed.
Recommendation · First Report - Soil health · Addressed to Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs
Recommended (the committee's words)
By 2025, the Government should commission and publish a review considering what financial barriers, including upfront investment costs, are preventing more sustainable farming systems. Based on these findings, the Government should develop, alongside the industry, measures to combat the problem. These could include enabling access to more upfront grants, more Government-funded advisory services, low-cost finance or encouraging the sharing and pooling of resources.
Recommendation · First Report - Soil health · Addressed to Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs
Recommended (the committee's words)
By 2026, payment rates for the Sustainable Farming Incentive and Countryside Stewardship schemes should be increased and calculated on the basis of income foregone, costs and an additional uplift for the public goods potentially provided. These payment rates should be developed using data collected under the Natural Capital and Ecosystem Assessment Programme and ELMs. Underlying methodologies used to calculate payment rates should be made publicly available.
Recommendation · First Report - Soil health · Addressed to Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs
Recommended (the committee's words)
We are also concerned that significant numbers of farmers may struggle to access ELMs and so be unable to improve their soils. We are concerned about access for non-arable farmers, small-scale farmers, the horticultural sector, those with common land grazing rights and, in particular, tenant farmers. While we welcome the progress made for tenant farmer access to the SFI, we encourage the Government to continue the monitoring of uptake amongst different types of farmers and take steps to remove barriers to all ELM schemes when identified.
Conclusion · First Report - Soil health · Addressed to Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs
Concluded (the committee's words)
We are pleased to see soils being targeted specifically as part of the new Environmental Land Management (ELM) schemes. While these measures are a good start, the measures in the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) are basic and lack essential actions that are known to protect and enhance soils. The role of the Countryside Stewardship (CS) and Landscape Recovery (LR) schemes in improving soil health also needs to be clearer. Low initial ambition is understandable while the Government is focusing on increasing farmer engagement with ELMs, improving its evidence base and establishing soil health baselines. In the long run, as ‘sustainable soil management’ is defined, the Government needs to strike a better balance 50 Soil health between giving farmers the flexibility to make choices that are right for their farm, incentivising the most sustainable combinations of actions, and getting more land into ELM schemes, in order to achieve positive soil health outcomes.
Recommendation · First Report - Soil health · Addressed to Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs
Recommended (the committee's words)
Using an analysis of recent soil health trends, the Government should set out, by 2026, long-term plans for how ELM schemes will become more ambitious for soils. This should include: a) Putting all basic actions known to improve soils into the SFI if evidence suggests that the economic drivers are lacking to adopt such measures. b) Adapting CS so that it provides more attractive options which expand upon the basic soil actions in the SFI and offer a way for farmers to easily rachet up their soil health ambitions. c) Working with the agricultural sector to develop a common understanding of “sustainable soil management”. By 2030, ELM scheme participants should be incentivised to combine SFI and CS actions that meet this definition. This definition should be flexible enough to allow for local innovation, experience and geodiversity. d) Setting a target for more than 90% of agricultural land to meet a definition of “sustainably managed” by 2040.
Conclusion · First Report - Soil health · Addressed to Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs
Concluded (the committee's words)
It is disappointing that the Government has not acted on our previous calls for a set of measurable targets and an evaluation programme for the Environmental Land Management (ELM) schemes. The impact of ELM scheme must be monitored more effectively than previous environmental management schemes to gain the benefits of the iterative approach. This would ensure that ELMs deliver positive outcomes for the environment, which paying for actions does not guarantee, and demonstrate that public money is being well spent. If this is done successfully, alongside seeking feedback from farmers, it would enable a better analysis of the impact that the ELM scheme actions are having, both independently and in combination with each other.
Recommendation · First Report - Soil health · Addressed to Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs
Recommended (the committee's words)
By the end of 2024, the Government should publish an evaluation programme for ELMs. This should be designed alongside the soil health indicators so that they can consistently measure progress on soil health. It should also use anonymised and aggregated data collected by farmers and enable them to feedback into the system directly and regularly. The Government should also publish an annual report detailing: levels of uptake for each scheme; which actions participants are undertaking; how farmer feedback is influencing the development of ELMs; the impact on the environment, including soils; and how this is driving progress towards a set of measurable national targets for soils.
Recommendation · First Report - Soil health · Addressed to Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs
Recommended (the committee's words)
ELMs and the establishment of private ecosystem marketplaces do not tackle all the fundamental economic drivers of unsustainable soil management within the supply chain. We would like to see the Government set out how it will deal with the poor profitability within the sector, which is a barrier to more sustainable food production; take steps to ensure that assurance standards and contracts with retailers support a consistent and robust definition of sustainable soil management; Soil health 51 and consider measures that will help consumers make more sustainable choices. The Government should also set out how it intends to boost supply and access to a diverse range of organic inputs, which are critical for improving soil health. Given that food waste is expected to be collected from all businesses and households by 2026, it is important to have a clear picture for the organic recycling industry before then.
Recommendation · First Report - Soil health · Addressed to Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs
Recommended (the committee's words)
By mid-2025, the Government should develop an action plan setting out how it will make organic inputs a more economical choice for farmers. This should include measures that boost the availability and diversity of organic inputs to achieve soil health targets and ensure the organic recycling and agricultural sectors have the facilities and technologies to produce, store and spread a diverse range of organic inputs, including compost, digestate and biosolids. The Government also needs to support research into novel fertilisers and new technologies that can enable more use of organic inputs.
Recommendation · First Report - Soil health · Addressed to Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs
Recommended (the committee's words)
The next Environmental Improvement Plan, due by 2028, should incorporate this action plan. It should also set out how the Government will address other drivers in the wider food supply chain that encourage poor soil management. These include a lack of profitability in the sector and unsustainable consumer and retailer demands. To support this, the Government should work with industry to develop a common understanding of sustainable soil management that assurance standards and retailer- supplier agreements can adhere to. The Government should also ask the Food Data and Transparency Partnership to consider how this definition could be part of a future ecolabelling system in the future.
Conclusion · First Report - Soil health · Addressed to Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs
Concluded (the committee's words)
Current soil regulations contain significant gaps both within and particularly outside of agriculture. Historically, regulations have seen soil as a medium and vector for the pollution of other natural assets, so a wide array of soil health aspects are not protected. This situation is likely to get worse as Cross Compliance is phased out in 2024. While we acknowledge that most farmers want to do the right thing, a new soil protections legislative framework is needed as a backstop to address gaps, enforce the ‘polluter pays’ principle, and establish minimum acceptable standards for those who choose not to engage with the voluntary ELM schemes.
Conclusion · First Report - Soil health · Addressed to Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs
Concluded (the committee's words)
A new soil protections framework will be a major project and rely on data that is not yet available, suitable definition(s) of ‘sustainable soil management’, and engagement with a wide range of stakeholders. We also recognise that it is also a difficult time for farmers during the transition away from the Basic Payments Scheme. We agree that offering incentives to change is initially a better way to engage farmers with this potentially quite disruptive and costly transition to improved soil management. We also strongly believe that focusing on incentives for the time being will build a better relationship between Defra and the agricultural community. The Government is right to suggest that we should get a full understanding of how well the ELM schemes work before acting. We also believe, however, that some kind of regulatory baseline will be needed, likely one that prevents soil degradation wherever possible, while Government incentives concentrate more on soil restoration. Shifting incentives in 52 Soil health this way will also only be possible once private sector initiatives are well established and other underlying supply chain issues are resolved. All this will take time.
Recommendation · First Report - Soil health · Addressed to Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs
Recommended (the committee's words)
Using improved soil health and soil management data, as well as its evaluation of the success of the ELM schemes, the Department should work with industry, academics and regulators on a more robust regulatory baseline for soils. These regulations should be in line with any future soil health targets and any future definition of ‘sustainable soil management’. This new regulatory framework should be consulted on, legislated for and clearly communicated before 2030, with provisions coming into force by 2035, to give land managers and owners time to prepare. The new laws would preferably take a combined approach with other areas, such as water and air quality but could take the form of a soil-specific regulatory framework. While agriculture should be an important focus, we would also like to see a framework offering protections for all types of soils.
Recommendation · First Report - Soil health · Addressed to Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs
Recommended (the committee's words)
In the agricultural sector, the regulatory baseline should be designed to work in tandem with ELM schemes. Initially it should incorporate most of the soil health actions in the Sustainable Farming Incentive, with all ELM schemes becoming more ambitious on soils. As the ELM schemes become more ambitious, so too should the regulatory baseline: we recommend that regulations and ELMs are reviewed every five years to ratchet up soil protections and incorporate the latest evidence on what works. In the long-term, the Government should aim for a situation where regulations prevent soil degradation and ELM schemes focus on soil and habitat restoration.
Recommendation · First Report - Soil health · Addressed to Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs
Recommended (the committee's words)
Soil contamination is a well-known yet not well-understood problem. There has been a longstanding and unacceptable failure to remediate historical soil contamination that acts as a barrier to nature recovery. As for contamination through agricultural inputs, the Government should also improve controls and protocols—both for their production and application—to give the sector more confidence to use these more freely. It is particularly disappointing that regulatory updates for sewage sludge have not yet happened. However, the most effective measure to tackle soil contamination is to prevent it in the first place.
Recommendation · First Report - Soil health · Addressed to Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs
Recommended (the committee's words)
By the end of 2025, the Government and Environment Agency should review the current regulations for the production, testing and application of organic inputs to make sure that are delivering enough protections against soil contamination. This review should set out a plan for closing any gaps in protections by 2026/27.
Recommendation · First Report - Soil health · Addressed to Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs
Recommended (the committee's words)
The national soil monitoring programme should aim to gain a better understanding of the scale of soil contamination. To spur progress on nature recovery targets, this information should identify problematic areas that local authorities and developers are encouraged to remediate. Contamination data should also be used to develop Extended Producer Responsibility for products that pollute agricultural inputs, soils and water as soon as possible. The Government should publish a timeline for delivery by 2026, which should then be incorporated into the Environmental Improvement Plan update scheduled for 2028.
Recommendation · First Report - Soil health · Addressed to Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs
Recommended (the committee's words)
The Government should set up a soil remediation taskforce in 2024 to tackle the barriers to soil remediation. This should consider the role that new technologies Soil health 53 can play with hard-to-remediate soils, as well as the provision of funding to either developers, local authorities or regulators to tackle the cases that the planning system and private sector are incapable of improving. The Taskforce’s proposals should inform the updated Environmental Improvement Plan due by 2028, which should set out how soil remediation will help the Government make progress towards its nature recovery targets.
Conclusion · First Report - Soil health · Addressed to Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs
Concluded (the committee's words)
We are pleased to see that the Government has announced plans to reduce the amount of soil sent to landfill. These reforms are an update to guidance and the trialling of soil storage sites, which stakeholders welcome but it remains to be seen if these are enough to bring about real change. Regulation may be required to make currently voluntary codes of practice mandatory.
Recommendation · First Report - Soil health · Addressed to Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs
Recommended (the committee's words)
By 2027, the Government should review progress with the Soil Reuse and Depot scheme and revised construction codes of practice. This should include a consultation with stakeholders on whether these voluntary codes should become mandatory and regulated by an independent body or the Environment Agency. The revised 2028 Environmental Improvement Plan should incorporate any further actions the Government will take.
Recommendation · First Report - Soil health · Addressed to Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs
Recommended (the committee's words)
The Environment Agency and the Rural Payments Agency should continue to take an initially supportive approach when monitoring compliance, given the low levels of engagement and the fact that most farmers want to do the right thing for their soils. Follow ups will be essential to ensure that compliance breaches are being adequately addressed. If this “supportive” approach is, however, a key method of spreading awareness of farming regulations, then the inspections regime should also be boosted. We recognise that remote technologies and approaches will be able to help, and we are pleased that the EA has more funding to conduct site visits, but these still need to be more comprehensive and frequent; visiting just 4% of farms every year will not act as a deterrent to bad actors, nor help the farmers that could benefit from the “supportive” approach.
Recommendation · First Report - Soil health · Addressed to Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs
Recommended (the committee's words)
More monitoring will mean that these agencies need to be fully resourced. In the case of the Environment Agency, where funding for monitoring usually comes via the Environmental Permitting regulations, the Department needs to come up with ways of driving up this funding. This could be achieved by putting more activities under Environmental Permitting or by developing new systems for funding compliance visits.
Recommendation · First Report - Soil health · Addressed to Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs
Recommended (the committee's words)
The EA and the RPA should continue with the “supportive” approach to compliance monitoring. By the end of the agricultural transition in 2028, however, Defra and these institutions should publish a clear and transparent regime of comprehensive site visits and other actions that they will take to help farmers comply with rules, prevent fraud and ensure that compliance actions issued are followed. To ensure that any new regulatory soil framework is effective, and let farmers benefit more from the “supportive” approach they are taking, the EA and RPA should be adequately resourced so that farms can expect routine visits every few years. To achieve this, the Department and the EA will need to develop ways to increase funding for compliance monitoring.
Conclusion · First Report - Soil health · Addressed to Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs
Concluded (the committee's words)
There are gaps in local knowledge and skills when it comes to soil health and soil management across the economy. As environmental outcomes become more embedded in policy through agricultural, planning, construction and other reforms, it is vital that consultants and advisors as well as land managers are well-prepared to make decisions. The land use framework could help but it is no replacement for effective training, well-resourced consulting and ensuring that advice is based on the latest scientific knowledge. Stakeholders have made the case for improved education, training and guidance that is relevant to different soils and farm systems, as well as a well-resourced advisory sector. We agree that we need to see much more farmer- led research, combined with peer-to-peer knowledge exchange, to develop best soil management practices. We believe this could create a more positive feedback loop to encourage greater take-up of ELM schemes.
Recommendation · First Report - Soil health · Addressed to Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs
Recommended (the committee's words)
By 2026, the Government should publish a review into the skills and training available to support key initiatives for nature recovery across all relevant sectors. This review should analyse the training, guidance and advisory services available in the agricultural sector and set out a plan for improving their quality by ensuring that they are based on robust scientific and impartial evidence. It should also ensure that they are accessible and affordable to all that need them.
Recommendation · First Report - Soil health · Addressed to Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs
Recommended (the committee's words)
The review should also identify where guidance documents for sustainable farming— including sustainable soil management—could be better synthesised and made more specific to particular settings. Working closely with respected organisations such as the AHDB, the Government should invest in research projects to develop guidance and decision-making support tools for the delivery of future ELM objectives, ones that encourage a “whole farm” approach. ELM schemes should also subsidise collaborations between farmers and academics as well as events that facilitate knowledge exchange in the agricultural sector.