FOI reveals £65m soil data gap in Sustainable Farming Incentive

More than £65 million was paid to farmers to assess and manage their soils under the Sustainable Farming Incentive, but the results were never routinely collected by government, a Freedom of Information request has revealed.

Between 2023 and 2026, 74,617 farm businesses participated in the scheme’s SAM1 and CSAM1 soil actions, covering around 10.9 million hectares through new and ongoing agreements. Payments totalled £65,383,489.

Farmers taking part were paid to assess soil health, produce a soil management plan and test soil organic matter as part of their agreements.

However, the results of those assessments, management plans and organic matter tests were not routinely submitted to government.

Instead, information was requested by the Rural Payments Agency (RPA) on an ad-hoc basis as part of its inspection process.

The Sustainable Soils Alliance (SSA), which obtained the information through an FOI request, said the approach represented a missed opportunity to build a clearer picture of the condition of England’s agricultural soils.

Soil has been a central part of the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) since its launch in 2022, with farmers offered payments for actions intended to protect and improve soil health.

Matthew Orman, director of the SSA, said the information generated through the scheme could have contributed to a wider understanding of soil condition and resilience.

“Recent extreme weather has highlighted how critical soils are for national and on-farm resilience, and soils data are critical for understanding the state our soils are in,” he said.

“SFI data could have made a significant contribution to this picture, but results collection was never incorporated into the original design.”

Under the soil actions, farmers were expected to evaluate factors including soil type, structure and biology, as well as identify risks such as runoff, erosion and nitrogen leaching.

They were also expected to test soil organic matter and develop management plans setting out actions that could improve soil health.

But Orman said there was no central record showing whether those plans were subsequently implemented or what impact they had.

“Farmers were asked to develop soil management plans, but we don’t know whether they were implemented, what the results were or what their experience or learnings were,” he said.

The SSA also questioned the decision not to collect the results of subsidised soil carbon audits.

Orman said those results could have helped inform a national baseline and identify areas where soil degradation may require greater attention from future environmental farming schemes.

He said the absence of information had left a “huge black hole” in understanding both the condition of English soils and the support farmers may need to change their management practices.

The findings come as Defra pursues targets for 40% of England’s agricultural soil to be under sustainable management by 2028, rising to 60% by 2030 under its Environmental Improvement Plan.

Before the SFI was launched in June 2022, Defra described soil as “a critical national asset” and highlighted its importance to food production, carbon storage and water quality.

The department also said organic matter was central to improving soil health and warned that levels in many arable soils were low and at risk of deteriorating further.

Under the 2023 SFI offer, farmers taking part in SAM1 were paid £5.80 per hectare to carry out soil assessments, produce management plans and test organic matter.

The rate increased to £6 per hectare under CSAM1 in 2024.

The payments were made for carrying out the actions rather than for supplying a national dataset, but the SSA argues that incorporating results collection into the scheme could have created a significant source of evidence on soil health and farm management.

Orman urged Defra to consider a different approach in future schemes and pointed to Northern Ireland as an example.

Participation in Northern Ireland’s Soil Nutrient Health Scheme is a condition for receiving the Farm Sustainability Payment.

The programme aims to sample every field in Northern Ireland and provide farmers with a baseline assessment of their soil nutrient status.

“Soils data needs to be understood as a public good in its own right,” Orman said.

He added that Defra should learn from Northern Ireland’s experience of using a funded baseline programme linked to agricultural support.

Separate efforts are already under way to improve understanding of England’s soils.

These include the removal of the paywall from the Soil Maps of England and Wales and the publication of initial findings from the Natural Capital Ecosystem Assessment.

The assessment is intended to help develop a more comprehensive baseline of England’s soils and wider natural capital.

The FOI findings nevertheless raise questions over whether information generated through future environmental farming schemes should be collected more systematically, particularly as government seeks to measure progress towards its soil management targets.