30 May

Sources at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) have confirmed the nature-friendly farming budget will be severely cut in the spending review on the 11th of June. Funding will be targeted at ‘small farms’, meaning that many wealthier and larger farms will no longer be eligible.

Defra has announced a £30 million boost to payments received for nature-friendly farming practices under the Higher Level Stewardship (HLS) scheme. From the 1st of January 2026, payment rates for 157 HLS options will rise, providing further funding to farmers and land managers to undertake more complex environmental management practices.

The fourth session of oral evidence contributing to the Environment and Climate Change Committee’s Nitrogen Inquiry occurred this week. The Sustainable Nitrogen Alliance called for a cross-department Nitrogen Strategy to ensure a holistic approach to tackling the pollutant, rather than action being owned only by Defra. You can read our written submission to the Nitrogen Inquiry here.

The European Commission has published a list of Mission Soil Ambassadors. These ambassadors will support the goals of the EU Mission: A Soil Deal for Europe – an EU-wide research and innovation project for healthy soils – by fostering collaboration, encouraging action to protect and restore soil, and engaging with communities and networks of soil champions.

Precision agriculture company Paul-Tech have introduced a groundbreaking update to its innovative soil station – which monitors nutrient movement through the soil – enabling the accurate measurement of nitrogen in real time to optimise crop nutrient management.

The UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (UKCEH) has published a list of non-native species that have the potential to become invasive over the next decade and the potential risks that they bear to the UK’s system, stating that some of the listed species could be damaging to soil health in the UK.

A research team from Tsinghua University, Beijing have mapped the distribution of potentially toxic metals in soil at 796,084 sampling points across the world. The map indicates that 14 to 17 percent of cropland is severely affected by heavy metal contamination, and that around 1 billion people live in regions with soils dangerously polluted by toxic metals.