Recommendation 10

HM Government Acknowledged

The Government recognises that healthy soil underpins a range of environmental, economic and societal benefits, including, food production, biodiversity, carbon storage and flood mitigation. Protecting and improving soil is essential for supporting these benefits and preventing the negative impacts caused by its degradation. land management schemes in England, and to help achieve our 25YEP commitment to sustainably managed soils by 2030, we are considering several urgent actions to support land managers and farmers to achieve sustainable soil management. To demonstrate this priority, two of our first standards under the Sustainable Farming Incentive scheme focus on soils (the Improved Grassland Soils; and Arable and Horticultural Soils). Actions include sustainable farming approaches to improve soil health for which farmers will be rewarded, for example the introduction of herbal leys and the use of grass-legume mixtures and cover crops. It makes sense to start the early roll out of the Sustainable Farming Incentive with these soils standards because healthy soils are the foundation of sustainable farming and underpin a range of environmental benefits, as well as production. The soil standards will be widely applicable and will therefore provide opportunity for a large number of farmers to be rewarded for sustainable soil management. The standards and the overall scheme are designed to support a range of farmers; including those who are beginning to adopt sustainable practices as well as those who are already experienced in these, who will be rewarded for increasing the ambition of their land management. We are currently testing these standards in the Sustainable Farming Incentive pilot and released further information on our plans for the Sustainable Farming Incentive on gov.uk in March 2021 (Sustainable Farming Incentive: Defra’s plans for piloting and launching the scheme). indicator as set out in the 25YEP. These metrics will represent the diverse functions and ecosystem services that soils provide across all land-use and soil types. We are also considering options for a baseline assessment of soil health against which change and any potential future soil health targets can be measured. The metrics and indicator work will combine current understanding of soil systems with new soil data. This will allow us to monitor improvements in soil health and to highlight the state of soil health throughout England. uses and soil types. This will complement the healthy soils indicator and a future soil health monitoring scheme by providing a straight-forward measure of long-term trends. structure target to be developed for achieving sustainably managed soils in England by 2030. The soil structure data will also feed into future soil health monitoring. Together, these actions will help land managers and farmers to track the health of their soil and the impact of their management practices, over time. These actions will also enable us to produce robust data to monitor improvements in soil health, map trends and make informed policy decisions. Funding for biodiversity (recommendations 11-14)