Sustainable Soils
This past weekend I was in Lyme Regis appearing at the town’s Marine Theatre hosting a talk with my friend, the writer Graham Harvey, as part of the Shute Festival. And, as is always the case with Graham, we were discussing the vital importance of the stuff beneath our feet. Why the world doesn’t take more care of the soils which grow our food and lock away so much carbon is a mystery - but hopefully it is waking up to the fact we need to be very caring indeed of this remarkable underground part of our world.
It happened that also at the weekend that we published the following article in the Western Morning News as part of my work with RAW Food & Drink PR….
A great many of the problems hitting society today have no obvious remedy - we just have to adapt to, and live with, the new norm as best we can. But in the world of food and drink there are a few fixes available which could both help to heal the environment and afford us better nutrition. You could describe one of the biggest and most far-reaching of these as the elephant in the room, except it would be more accurately described as the elephant under the room.
We’re talking about soil-health and you could say that the situation surrounding the stuff beneath our feet represents a massive open goal. Why? Because at present UK soils are being destroyed 10 times faster than they are being created and climate change is expected to make this worse in the years to come. Reversing that situation should be way up there on top of government and food industry agendas.
The fact it’s not, is astonishing. Even though 95 percent of global food supplies are directly or indirectly produced on soils, we care so little about the amazing growing-medium beneath our feet that this valuable life-giving substance makes up 58 percent of the tonnage shoved into UK landfills.
How wasteful is that? I’ll tell you. One teaspoon of the amazing stuff we call soil contains more living organisms than there are people in the world - multiply that fact and you discover that, here in the UK, soils store over 10 billion tonnes of carbon in the form of organic matter. That is roughly equal to 80 years of annual UK greenhouse gas emissions! So it really is astounding not more is being done to address the health of our soils. In England we spend an almost invisible fraction on soil monitoring (just 0.4 percent) compared with the sums we splash out on checking the quality of air or water.
We know that because there is now an organisation set up to reverse the trashing of our soils. It is called the Sustainable Soils Alliance (SSA - www.sustainablesoils.org), formed in 2017 with the aim of restoring UK soils to health, and the organisation held a major fundraising event here in the South West just a few days ago, raising £20,000.
My colleagues at RAW Food and Drink PR became involved because one of our clients (Devon-based Luscombe Drinks) supplied the liquid refreshment for the delegates who gathered at Yeo Valley Organic in Somerset last week. Indeed, several of the companies we work with (such as Trewithen Dairy and Matthews Cotswold Flour) are actively working with farmers to improve the soils which produce their milk and cereals, so this movement is certainly no flash in the culinary pan.
Ellen Fay, co-founder and co-director of SSA told us: “Soil health is vital when it comes to so many environmental opportunities - from carbon and water storage to flood protection and thriving biodiversity – and it is critical to food security and farmer livelihoods. Yet UK soils are being destroyed 10 times faster than they are being created.
Ellen Fay, co-founder and co-director of SSA
“Climate change is expected to exacerbate this situation, so you may find it surprising that there is no coherent policy framework for soil. Regulations are inadequate and unenforced, there is no long-term soils monitoring or even consensus on the core tools or metrics to do so. And investment in soil education for farmers, advisors, specialists and the public is minimal.
“Without these mechanisms, UK soils will continue to decline,” Ellen said “This is where we step in. The Sustainable Soils Alliance was launched in 2017 with the mission to see UK soils restored to health through sustainable management within a generation. We are a campaigning organisation, aiming to raise soil’s political profile, but in reflection of the challenges outlined above, we also operate as a think-tank – convening experts to devise solutions to the complex technical, practical and legal challenges that need to be addressed to develop a viable soils policy.
“Our agenda has been set by the opportunities to influence farming and environment policy that continue to be generated by Brexit and is driven by the rapidly growing interest in soils, regenerative farming and its contribution to Net Zero among businesses and the public.”
In the past there’s been a tendency within the food and drink industry to regard those who worry about things like soil fringe environmentalists. That’s no longer the case. As we’ve said, major companies are becoming engaged with such issues and, certainly, the SSA has been set up as an evidence-based organisation.
“Our content and direction is informed by our Science Panel (comprising professors from some of the UK’s leading soil science institutions) and our Strategic Advisory Board (comprising leading representatives from government agencies, farming, business and NGOs),” Ellen told me.
“We have established ourselves as the go-to soils policy organisation. This is reflected in the nature of our activities as well as the range of organisations that ask us not only to collaborate with them, but to take the lead – the Defra soils team, Tesco, WWF, the Environment Agency, and the Consortium behind the UK Farm Soil Carbon Code among them.”
This week I talked to Bertie Matthews, managing director of South West based Matthews Cotswold Flour - a company which is working hard with cereal farmers to improve soil health…
Bertie Matthews (right) managing director of South West based Matthews Cotswold Flour
“Our present highly industrialised food system will have trouble feeding us in a quarter of a century - never mind supporting generations in 200 years time - because it is not built around long term soil health,” he commented.
“The big multinational organisations which create our food do have the power to change this and would do so if there was enough pressure from consumers demanding change. However, there is a worrying lack of awareness. Why should the average person on the street worry about something as seemingly obscure as soil health?
“Believe me, they should,” sighs Bertie. “I say that as a person who produces that most basic of ingredients - the flour that gives us our daily bread. The good news is that we have the techniques and the understanding to make the urgent changes and, as an organisation, we are working closely with our farmers to secure the future of our soil and encourage others to do the same.”
Down in Cornwall the Clarke family who own Trewithen Dairy are pursuing the subject of soil-health with all the scientific rigour and care the company has become famous for.
Bill Clarke, Trewithen Dairy
“As a processor of milk we want to be doing the right thing and we need to be responsible - which means learning about things such as regenerative farming and looking after soil health, “ says company chairman Bill Clarke. “As we learn, it is down to us to encourage farmers to come on the journey with us. Producing milk in an environmentally-friendly way is something we are very excited about and it’s going to be central to the Trewithen brand, without doubt.”
Why is this all worth reporting in the food and not the environment pages? Because more and more scientists now believe that nutrient rich soils produce nutrient rich food filled with all manner of trace elements and hitherto unknown chemical combinations which are good for our gut-biome and therefore essential for our wellbeing. I’m not a scientist but that makes sense to me. Would you eat a fish that had been fattened in some kind of artificial chemical swill? I wouldn’t. Which is why I’d much prefer to eat plants or plant-based food such and meat and dairy grown naturally on healthy soils.
Soil monitoring for Trewithen Dairy in Cornwall
