Soil is always at the forefront of the Soil Association’s work, but especially so during 2015’s International Year of Soils: a year designated by the United Nations to highlight how soil – full of life and frequently overlooked – is essential to all human life.
The health of soil is being rapidly degraded, which will affect the future of food and farming drastically. We face the challenge of feeding an ever-increasing population with limited natural resources, which are becoming further limited at an alarming rate – we need to rethink how we use the earth to feed ourselves.
One solution: the Duchy Future Farming programme
To address this often underestimated problem, the Soil Association delivers the Duchy Future Farming programme. This initiative supports UK farmers to develop techniques to safeguard against the challenges facing agriculture; now and in the future.
At the heart of the Duchy Future Farming programme are our field labs. These are in-the-field experiments led by both organic and non-organic farmers and growers. The field labs exist to find practical, sustainable farming solutions for a wide range of problems. They are founded on collaboration and sustainability, where the farmers involved share their knowledge and influence the practice of others for the good of our planet.
The purpose of the field lab, entitled ‘Building Soil Organic Matter’, was for farmers to evaluate the potential of growing green manure crops to reduce the loss of organic matter in soil. Growing green manure crops improves soil structure, fertility and can lower costs for the farmer.
The farmers involved practiced a mix of enterprises, and with different soil types. Half of the farmers kept livestock. The field lab was split across several different trial sites, and the farmers met several times over 2014 to discuss how effective their green manure crops had been in improving soil quality. One of the problems that the farmers faced was fitting green manure crops into sometimes already very tight crop rotations, though this is easier for those farmers with livestock.
When tested, the soil organic matter was relatively high (5-6%) at the farms participating in the field lab (a sample sent to Defra from a range of 40 arable farms recorded an average of 3%). Under direct observation, the soil on the participating farms looked structured and healthy, with plenty of earthworms which suggests good levels of bacteria.
Benefits of field labs
As a result of the field lab, three of the farmers involved altered their practices to use green manure crops, citing the benefit to pollinators, improving soil manageability and quality and retaining nitrogen as some of their reasons. Another major benefit found after planting certain types of green manure crops (chicory and sainfoin) was that grazing lambs didn’t need to be wormed until much later in the year.
Read More
The Duchy Future Farming programme
How you can help to save our soils
Rhiannon Davis is a Communications Assistant at the Soil Association.
Ed George
May 11, 2015 at 10:25amI’m volunteering with a mission that owns five acres of land being developed for organic food production. I planted a fall cover crop, 2014, and seeing is believing. This spring, there is tremendous cereal rye, crimson clover and hairy vetch. Monarch butterflies were fly in the pollinating rye and with the recent 8 inches of rain earthworms were everywhere. The field is in a flood plain but the levy held and soil remained on the field.
As a agronomist in production agriculture, urban agriculture is so important using principles on conservation of natural resources, environmental protection, and economic sustainability. With 1,440 acres of agricultural land lost to urban growth, there is tremendous need for inter-city food production grown locally knowing production practices and the producers.