“The biggest potential disaster that is facing us all is the degradation of our soil. That should be at the core of our thinking," said the Soil Association President Monty Don at their annual conference.
Monty Don will be discussing the threat to soil in ‘Shared Planet’ airing on Radio 4 at 11am on Tuesday 15 October. This episode of Shared Planet explores the earth’s soils as an important natural resource under much pressure from a growing human population and dependent wildlife.
He will be looking at the latest science on UK soils in this programme and reflecting on what this decline could mean.
"If we are to feed the world, we must have good soil.
"As a soil scientist said to me only last week, we have reached ‘peak soil’ and we can’t produce any more. 40% of the land mass of this earth Is now being cultivated, and because our soil is being used up - we’re losing it at the rate of about 50 times the rate that it’s reproducing - the companies and corporations are buying more land. We are trying to consume our way out of over consumption. It’s a disaster.”
Soil Association Policy Director Peter Melchett comments: “Following the EU decision to drop their proposed European legislation to protect soils, partly at the insistence of the UK government, the Soil Association is calling on Owen Paterson to say what he will do to stop the extraordinarily high rate of loss of UK soils on which all of our food production depends.
"The latest major UK soil study, conducted in 2009, found that food production is being jeopardised by the loss of two million tonnes of topsoil each year. The health of our soil is too important to leave to chance. The EU directive that the UK government has blocked would have led to co-ordinated action to protect and improve soils across the EU. Now it is up to the UK government to take action.”
