27 June

The Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA) have launched a new Farming with Nature Transition (FwNT) scheme, which will incentivise farmers in Northern Ireland to undertake environmental works on farms, including actions seeking to improve farm soil health.

In a recently published POSTNote on regenerative agriculture, the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) have stated that it “does not currently intend to subsidise regenerative agriculture”, with the department claiming insufficient UK-specific evidence that it delivers public goods, despite evidence which shows that regenerative agriculture can improve soil health and soil organic carbon, and reduce input costs and short-term yield declines.

London Climate Action Week is taking place this week, with more than 700 events due to take place across the capital. Multiple events feature the topic of soil, and many of the festival’s events are free and open to the public – go and check them out if you find yourself in London this week.

Farmers will stage a protest outside Welsh Labour's annual conference in Llandudno, expressing frustration over Labour’s proposed Inheritance Tax reform. This comes just days after the announcement that a group of farmers hope to take Government to the High Court over its decision not to consult with the sector over the proposed tax reforms.

The recently published Fuel to Fork report from IPES Food outlines the ways in which fossil fuels are damaging to global food systems, including drawing causal links between the overreliance on fossil fuels in food production and soil degradation. The report sets out ways to diversify our food systems and break fossil fuel dependency.

A recent report published by the London School of Economics has indicated a rise in legal challenges related to carbon credits, demonstrating growing scrutiny of both soil carbon sequestration schemes and the corporations buying carbon credits to offset their greenhouse gas emissions.

Great Fen at Speechly's Farm, a rich fenland located in Cambridgeshire, has been chosen as one of four locations to trial large-scale paludiculture – a peatland agricultural system which involves growing without draining the land in order to help lock carbon into the peat soil – as part of the Europe-wide PaluWise project.