16 May

The Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) will reopen applications to the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) scheme for a 6-week window for farmers who started the application process prior to its closure, following the threat of a legal challenge co-ordinated by the National Farmers Union (NFU).

The European Commission presented its Carbon Removals and Carbon Farming proposal to an expert group for review and approval. The proposal indicates how farmers will be rewarded for storing CO2 in the soil, including how to issue credits for climate-friendly practices such as crop rotation and precision fertilisation.

The EU has proposed weakening more of the environmental conditions tied to the Common Agricultural Policy, as part of plans to cut back regulations and paperwork for farmers. Smaller farmers would be exempted from baseline requirements tying their subsidies to nature friendly farming, while farm visits from regulatory bodies would be reduced to one per year.

Natural England launched a new nationwide map of peat and peaty soils, The England Peat Map. The map has the most detailed national coverage to date for indicators of peatland condition. It’s published on an open access web viewer and is freely accessible across a number of government platforms.

The agreement of the recent US-UK trade deal, which includes reciprocal market access for beef, and tariffs removed on ethanol coming from the US, could have implications for UK soil health. The deal could see a change in the land currently used for soil-eroding bioenergy production, which comprises 2.2% of the UK’s total arable area.

The RSPB’s petition calling on the UK Government to protect and grow the nature-friendly farming budget has now reached over 100,000 signatures. The charity will be presenting the petition to government next week ahead of the upcoming Spending Review.

A new report from Save Soil which examines the relationship between soil degradation and water cycling has found that over 40% of British soils have been degraded due to intensive agriculture, undermining their ability to store water and carbon. Degraded soils contribute to both flooding and drought by failing to absorb water, creating a feedback loop that worsens the climate crisis.

Researchers in Texas have developed a new way to identify hazardous soil pollutants which have previously never been isolated or studied. The new approach developed at Rice University combines light-based imaging and machine learning algorithms to detect carcinogenic compounds in soil.