Soil Health

Rachael Maskell Excerpts

Thursday 17th November 2016 Westminster Hall

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is good to see you in the Chair this afternoon, Mr Bone. I start by thanking the Environmental Audit Committee for the rigour with which it has conducted its inquiry. It has produced an excellent, evidence-based report. The Government should take heed of its warnings and embrace its solutions. The qualities and properties of our soils are so finely balanced, as we have heard this afternoon. Our understanding of that has led in the past to the degradation of soil and peat bog erosion in the lowlands and the highlands, and it has had a wider impact on biodiversity, natural habitats, and flooding and water management. It now presents issues around public health, climate change and food security. The call for an effective plan with clear targets, which my hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh) made at the last Environment, Food and Rural Affairs questions and again in her speech today, is the issue of today’s debate.

Before I move on, I must mention the fascinating speech of the hon. Member for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow). It reminded me of David Bellamy in my youth talking about soil, and the interest he created in me. She was right, as were other speakers, to talk about the enthusiasm with which farmers talk about this agenda. They are changing their practices to see better quality soil.

The Paris agreement has set the pace for the world on how we need to address the matter. The cap on temperature rises—it is frightening to see a 1.5 °C rise in global temperatures—will determine how we farm our land. With a 1 °C rise in temperature, we could see a 30% loss in peat. Without action, we could see half of our peat depleted. Likewise, we are losing 2.2 million tonnes of soil each year in the UK, but it takes 100 years to grow back just 1 cm of top soil. Action is needed now to ensure that we have sustainable soils by 2030. I have heard that with current farming techniques, much of our land has only 30 harvests left due to the depletion in soil quality. That puts our food security back under the spotlight. We have not seen the action that we would expect since the signing by Sir David King at COP 21 of the agreement to move forward on this issue. We have had a wasted year.

I have read the Government’s response to the Environmental Audit Committee’s work, and it is worrying. There is too much dependency on voluntary codes that are not delivering the required change for carbon sequestration back into our soils, particularly in the lowland peatlands. We are told that the answers will be found in plans yet to see the light of day. My concern is that we need a framework now. That will ensure that we restore soil health in a comprehensive, managed way. How will the Government monitor soils comprehensively? What will the drivers be to re-carbonise soils? What year-on-year targets will the Government set to ensure that they fulfil their obligations? Even the Committee on Climate Change is worried about the Government’s dependency on a narrow agenda to reach anywhere near what is needed.

Members have mentioned many good examples of farming practices, including changing crop mixes, planting grasses, using green manures, investing in agro-forestation schemes, moving to organic farming and using winter cover crops to secure the soil. There have been good examples of re-wetting peatland in the lowlands. That is so important in the fens, where peats are rapidly drying. We have to look at the agenda, but we also have to question why any form of burning or draining soils continues. We heard about that in the grouse moor shooting debate a couple of weeks back. Surely it is time for action to be taken.

We also need a proper analysis of the state of our soil. We have heard how Wales has put a progressive, systematic process in place. The Committee’s report has drawn that out as best practice. We would be wise to follow the actions of Labour’s initiative, which uses a tiny proportion of rural payments to undertake the work.

I was struck by what Professor Chris Collins said in the report. He talked about the need to define what we mean by “soil health”. He said:

“There needs to be clear policy direction, evidence based, that defines what soil health is, and critically the measure to be used to evaluate it.”

It is so important that we put those things in place.

The report also draws out the need to link monitoring to other important biodiversity measures, such as fauna, micro-diversity and soil structure. While ad hoc data gathering from farmers’ soil testing regimes could add to data, its methodology is not scientific enough to provide the necessary data, so I hope the Government will look again at that. Accurate auditing leads to effective mitigation planning and interventions. That leads me to ask the Minister, how will her Government implement a programme to see a 0.4% annual increase in soil carbon levels? How will she help farmers to achieve that? How will she assist some farmers to go even further? What interventions will the Government make to ensure that that happens? Specific timelines are needed now, not just warm words.

When will we be able to see the UK peatland strategy? I know that we have seen delay with the 25-year plans that my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) says should be co-joined. When will the strategy come to light? What measures will be in the peatland plan in particular to ensure that lowland peat is restored and is performing its vital role in carbon retention?

The report was published before the referendum, so I want to ask the Minister about the steps the Government will take on leaving the EU to assist farmers in making the transition to improved soil management, perhaps by converting to organic farming. Will they have access to the five-year conversion and maintenance payments, in the light of the fact that we could have left the EU by 2019? If there is no certainty over the next couple of years, the Government are unlikely to see many applications for transition. What future support will they provide for those in transition now? What sticks and carrots will they make available to make the necessary changes in the future? Answers are needed, because farmers are making choices for their futures now.

The three good statutory management requirements used for cross-compliance have failed to provide the necessary incentive to drive soil quality improvement. It is clear that the scheme has failed to properly audit farms, and there are loopholes in the system. What will the Minister’s priorities be in replacing that part of the rural development programme? As we have heard, we also need to examine the impact of anaerobic digestion. I will not go further into that debate due to the time, but I want to mention the issue of offsetting floods. Soil has so many important qualities in achieving that, so it is important that we also examine it as part of flood management.

I also want to touch on the issue of contaminated land, not least because my constituency was drawn out in the plan and because the funding is inadequate in the light of the contaminated land capital grants being removed. There are a number of contaminated sites in my constituency. They are some of the biggest development sites in the whole of Europe. We heard from the hon. Member for Rochdale (Simon Danczuk) how important that is, and I was enlightened by what the hon. Member for Angus (Mike Weir) said about Ministry of Defence sites, particularly as my local barracks has also been listed for closure and may not be suitable for development. It is so important that we support local authorities in their objectives to ensure that they deal with contamination, and put the proper funding in place.

I have asked a number of questions today but we know how important soil is and how important it is to put funding behind that. Most important of all, we are living through an environmental crisis. Soil is a precious element and therefore it is incumbent on Parliament to make sure that we get the right soil health strategy in place now.