30/4/2018

Soil funds better used supporting farmers: our letter to The Guardian

Soil

Dear sir,

Half the £10m, which is said to be needed to protect soils each year, is targeted at “enforcement”. Rather than invest in a state-funded soils police service, we would be far better to use public money to invest in supporting measures, which contribute to healthier soils and provide better expert advice to farmers – who, in our experience, are hungry for good advice (£10m a year needed to ensure England's soil is fit for farming, report warns).

Our soils are a national asset which we should be investing in, not least because they support our indigenous food production system, not just for today, but for generations to come.

Alastair Leake
Director of policy at GWCT’s Allerton Project

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Comments

Soil

at 13:53 on 01/05/2018 by Ross Cherrington

Soil enforcement is desperately poor and inspectors are tied with regulations reduction its effectiveness. There needs to be a robust soil enforcement process with penalties for those farmers who don't seem to care their farm is disappearing down the river. Advice has been offered for a decade or more now through CSF etc and still soil is being lost at unacceptable rates as farmers continue to plant the wrong crops in the wrong places and outwinter stock poorly as well

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