‘Send in the drones’ to protect soil
Squadrons of drones should be deployed to locate and penalize farmers who let soil run off their fields, a report said.
A coalition of campaigners complained that the Environment Agency can only check soil on 0.5 percent of farms each year, according to bbc. com.
Their report said drones can help to spot bad farming, which is said to cost more than £1.2 billion a year by clogging rivers and contributing to floods.
The experts said it was considering the ideas for combating soil run-off
The proposals come from the Angling Trust, World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the Rivers Trust — with support from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB).
Their preliminary briefing has been seen by the Environment Secretary Michael Gove.
The groups said poor farming is the chief cause of the UK’S decline in the health of rivers, and a major contributor to flooding.
They calculate that investment in stopping soil loss would pay back many times over.
But, they said, Environment Agency enforcement of soil protection is underfunded, and careless farming in remote fields is often hard to spot.
The challenge is particularly acute in the West Country where many farmers grow maize on steep slopes. The plants are widely spaced and soil left uncovered between them is liable to be flushed away in heavy rains.
Over-stocking livestock is another problem, as hooves compact fields and create a crust which blocks water from seeping into the sub-soil.
In Herefordshire, a trial drone surveillance scheme is said by the report to have worked well to prevent soil loss.
It focuses on maize — and also on potatoes, which exhaust soil and make it more likely to be washed away.
National effort
Under the trial, the Environment Agency shifted its local budget towards drones. Guided by a contour map, it identified the areas of fields most susceptible to losing soil in heavy rain.
The Agency offset the cost of drones by handing their farm advisory role locally to the Wye and Usk Foundation.
Simon Evans, a spokesman for the foundation, said, “When we started to tackle this problem in 2000 we had lost spawning salmon along the whole length of the English Wye.
“Working with the Agency hasn’t only improved soil — it’s also benefited fish, because we’ve now got 65 miles of the Wye with salmon spawning successfully.”
The report will urge ministers to replicate this scheme on a national level.
One of its authors, Mark Lloyd from the Angling Trust, said, “The rules on protecting soil aren’t being enforced.
“We need a baseline of regulation to stop bad farmers doing the wrong thing and to stop good farmers looking over the fence and seeing someone else get away with it.
“The trouble is that the Environment Agency can only respond to major incidents. But soil run-off is diffuse pollution — it comes in hundreds of thousands of trickles, not normally one big incident.
“What we really need is Treasury support, because for an investment of tens of millions of pounds you get hundreds or billions of pounds in benefit to local councils, water companies, and society as a whole.”
The report will call for a strategic approach to land use management in the UK, to be overseen by the new body proposed by Gove to ensure environmental standards postbrexit.
This would allow different farming practices in different areas. It would lead to farmers in parts of the West Country being incentivized to revert cropland to pasture or woodland to capture rainfall and bind vulnerable soils together.
The groups said farmers who allow soil to run off fields should first be given advice. But if they transgress again they should be prosecuted and lose farm grants.
Farmers who help prevent flooding and increase the carbon content of their soils should be rewarded through the grant system.