Economy, Trade, and Rural Affairs Committee

Good morning, everyone. My name is Will Stiles. I'm from Aberystwyth University. I'm a lecturer in soil science. My research has focused on a range of different things, mostly carbon fluxes from upland soils, but also I've worked as the lead for the Knowledge Exchange Hub for Farming Connect and also as work package 4 lead for Biomass Connect previously.

Good morning. I'm Bridget Emmett. I work for the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, and I'm based up in Bangor. I'm a soil and ecosystems scientist and I also am the lead scientist for the Welsh Government-funded Environment and Rural Affairs Monitoring and Modelling Programme, which you have received written evidence of. I also sit on the EU mission board for soil, just as an extra thing.

Professor Williams.

Bore da, bawb.

My name's Prysor Williams. I'm chair of agriculture and environment at the School of Environmental and Natural Sciences at Bangor University. My interests are in all things agriculture and the environment and how they interact with each other and affect each other. I also sit on various relevant committees, including being on the board of Farming Connect, and I'm also the chair of the agriculture industry climate change forum in Wales.

Okay. Thank you, all, and thank you also for your written evidence, which has hopefully informed Members in the line of questioning that they wish to put to you today. For the purposes of efficiency of the way the committee will run, I'll ask the first set of questions, and I'll begin with Dr Stiles, ask you, Professor Emmett, and then we'll go to Professor Williams. If at any point through the questioning sessions any of you want to intervene, please indicate and I'll call you in, but to allow for the efficiency of the questions, and in particular as one of our guests is remote today, we'll do it in that order, if that's all right with the guests. Thank you.

Soil health: vitally important to the provision of food, the natural environment and everything else we consider important in our world, really. I can't recall an inquiry being undertaken before looking at the whole soil health picture here in Wales. So, to open up and set the scene, why, in your mind, is it important that we give consideration to the current state of soil health here in Wales, and what can we be doing to make sure that we're protecting it for future generations?

Okay, that's quite a broad question in itself. I'll try and distil it down into some basic principles. Obviously, first and foremost for soil, our food production systems are based or predicated on delivery from soil. That is how the system works for the most part. We do have soilless systems, we do have horticultural systems, but, overwhelmingly, our food comes from soil-based systems. Soil is not a fixed environment; it is an ecosystem, a range of ecosystems, one could say, which are highly biodiverse, highly variable and are subject to constant change in the three pillars of characteristic, which are chemical, physical and biological. Soil health is the nexus of those three. You can have a healthy chemical constituent, but, obviously, it might be impoverished in a different facet and vice versa, and, overall, you need all three represented in some beneficial form, if you will, or some optimum form to have a healthy soil. It is the case that if you start losing that vitality within the ecosystem, if we have drops in the biodiversity within that ecosystem, then the potential for ecosystem resilience would be the same as for any above-ground ecosystem. Of course, if you don't have that resilient ecosystem, it won't function, it won't cycle nutrients, it won't make those available for plants. It won't be as, I suppose, resistant to perturbation from environmental changes, such as from climate change. Consequently, we won't be able to grow food as adequately, and that's, obviously, the consequence of potential loss of soil health.

Soil is the main capital asset all farmers in Wales have. That's the basis of everything that they do, and it forms really, really slowly. So, every bit of soil out there has been formed in the last 11,000 years, and it grows really slowly. So, that means it's not not renewable, but it renews at a very, very low rate. Every time you see that brown sludge going off a field and into a river and what have you, it should make you cry. That's just a disaster. That's hundreds of years of nature's work, just flowing down into a river and off the field, where, as Will has said, it's absolutely essential for our food production. It's essential for our food production, but it's also really important for our general well-being. It's capturing soil and holding soil. It's regulating water so we don't get such rapid rain flood into the rivers.

Also, the most recent statistic, which is just a bit jaw-dropping, is that 60 per cent of global biodiversity is thought to live in soil. Just think of that. Yet, in any of our biodiversity strategies, do we ever talk about soil biodiversity? Most of, for example, our antibiotics, the most commonly used antibiotics, have all been derived from soil micro-organisms. So, it is essential to protect for our food system, for our farming industry, but also for all of our well-being. Thank you.

Professor Williams.

Just to add to that, clearly, I congratulate the Senedd on conducting this inquiry. I guess you could argue that it's overdue, given the importance, as outlined by Bridget and Will, of soils in so many different facets. In a nutshell, the cost of not protecting—. There might be some that question why we spend resources on inquiries or on monitoring and so on. Well, it's an investment. It's not a cost, it's an investment, because the cost of not protecting our soils far, far outweighs the cost of doing so. So, I do welcome this inquiry and it has repercussions that are much broader than agriculture and food production. We talk about flood prevention, biodiversity and so on, as already mentioned. So, the repercussions are far and wide. Protecting our soils is of fundamental importance to society.

Given that all three of you have highlighted the importance of soils, and, obviously the productivity of those soils and the time Professor Emmett highlighted for the creation of soils—it's not something where you can go to the warehouse and get a load out of the warehouse; once it goes down that drain and into the oceans and it disappears, that topsoil is lost—what is the current state of soils here in Wales? You've set the scene for how important they are, so what is the state that we're looking at, on the condition of the reserve that we have on our fields and our landmass here in Wales?

In fairness, I'm better off passing across to my colleague who's got actual data on the state of the soils in Wales as opposed to my interpretation of her data.

But perhaps if you come back and give your impression.

Yes.

In my written evidence, I give a rather startling and depressing list of current statistics, and I would just again—. I'm not just saying this, but the Welsh Government is the only national Government that's actually got data over the last 10 years on the change and state of our soil health, and I just applaud the people who commissioned us to do it, because we now have real data, and the question is how do we respond to it. So, to give you some examples, whilst overall top soil carbon is stable, we have lost carbon from our arable soils. Our soils have now—we’ve got more soils that now exceed the phosphorous limit that we know causes risk to waters, and we all know some of the big public concerns about phosphorous in our waters, such as the Wye. We’ve lost some of our best land to urban expansion and that’s a concern—we’re fighting over the same land. We’ve got a little bit of good news in that there seems to be less nitrogen in our arable soils; we think that might be due to the 2021 agricultural pollution Act. And the biggest surprise—and we think we’re the only people with data on this—is compaction. So, the number of animals in Wales, if you go back to 2009-2010, has not decreased at all, and if you go back to the 1850s, we’ve gone from about 2 million or 3 million sheep and cattle to about 12 million. Just imagine the pressure of all those little hooves and sheep on our soil, and our upland soils in particular are quite sensitive, really.

So, we have reported now that, across the board in many, many of our soils, particularly in the agricultural soils, we’ve increased soil compaction. Now, why that matters—if you can just imagine, you’ve kind of got a sponge and you’ve squished it, when the rainfall comes, it can’t infiltrate as quickly, so you get rapid run-off. So, we’ve got more compacted soils, more nutrified soils, less carbon in our arable soils, we’ve lost some of our best land—it’s not a good picture. So, we reported in our 2017 report that things were kind of stable, and, actually, we’d done some good stuff, like we’d recovered from acid rain, which was a real thing in Wales; we’d recovered. But now, acidification is even restarting again. And one of the other worries that I think Prysor has reported on in the past is that over 70 per cent of our improved grassland soils do not have a pH, an acidity level, which means that they can effectively produce grass. They’re underperforming because farmers haven’t been putting lime on with their fertiliser. And if you use manufactured fertiliser without lime, it acidifies the soil, and the plants, in time, can’t use the phosphorous efficiently if the pH is too low. So, we’ve got too-acid soils and too-fertilised—.

So, we’ve got quite a range of issues and we’ve got hard data from a statistically robust programme, which suggests that in the last 10 years, things have really started to tip, and the question is that part of that will be land management, our management practices, we think climate change—we know we might not be adapting our practices to account for wetter winters, dryer summers. And yes, acid rain is—. We’ve done the benefits of switching off acid rain, but now we can see the consequences of not keeping up with our lime additions.

Okay. Thank you. Professor Williams, did you want to add anything to what's been said already?

Yes, just a few points, really, just to pick up on one or two things that Bridget said there. I mean, livestock numbers have declined quite considerably in the last two or three years in Wales, so we wait to see what the impacts of that might be. But we have had record wet winters—several records broken over the last five or 10 years, so this increased compaction, I guess, in some ways, is to be expected. It’s not to be welcomed, but wetter winters—and that’s what we are predicted to have more of—inevitably pose a huge challenge in terms of alleviating or avoiding soil compaction.

In terms of the control of agricultural pollution regulations, the impacts of those are mainly geared towards the livestock system more than the arable system. So, I think it’s a bit too early to say what the impacts of those will be, or are, on soil nitrogen levels, but they should lead to a reduction.

And just on the point about lime, as Bridget said, we’ve done some work looking at the soils of Wales, and the amount of lime applied or maybe not applied, and there is a real issue with the lack of lime application. We know that many farmers will be conducting and have conducted soil tests over the last few years, and some of that is part-funded through Farming Connect, for instance, but often, they don’t have the capital to act on the recommendations of those soil test results, and inevitably, in many cases, the recommendations would be to apply lime. So, there are several interesting factors that are driving why farmers are doing what they're doing, but we've also seen that there are considerable differences between different sectors as well.

The arable sector generally do act much more responsibly on the recommendations of soil test results, followed by the dairy sector and then beef and, to a lesser extent, sheep farmers are less likely to respond to those recommendations. Again, that is probably driven by market forces and capital, more so than anything else.

Just before I ask you the final point, I think one of the things that does drive it as well is the limited rental market that only offers farmers, in many instances, 12-month tenancies or 10-month tenancies. From a financial point of view, many farmers would be loath to spend any money on that land other than what they desperately need to spend on it, and I think that is an area that needs consideration. I've just given you my own thoughts on that. You've indicated what—. Sorry, Dr Stiles.

I was going to say—. I would only just add to that very quickly from my point of view one other thing from the acidification point of view in the uplands. One of the recent studies we have conducted shows that, where you have acidification, where liming has been ceased, we have a reduction in certain earthworm numbers and anecic earthworms particularly, which do the vertical burrowing, and we see a slower amount of water infiltration or a slower rate of water infiltration, which could lead, in principle at least, to greater potential for flooding. So, there are physical knock-on effects of the acidification of upland soils beyond just the potential for loss of grass growth, loss of production in that regard. We actually are seeing a reduction in biodiversity and the potential for ecosystem service delivery as well.

My final question to you is—we've looked at the importance of soil and why we need to value it, you've said what the current state of soil is and the assessment on the current state of soil—looking forward, if we carry on as we are, what is your impression of what the future might look like for soil structure and soil preservation here in Wales? Dr Stiles.

The trajectory at this minute is one of decline and of a challenging environment for soil. So, if things stay exactly as they are, if management stays exactly as it is without any changes, then obviously that degradation can be expected to continue. It might be a slow decline, it might be very gradual, but it is a trajectory that is a downwards trend, perhaps, in terms of soil health.

We have, generally speaking across Wales, given that we are very much grassland-system dominated, very low biodiversity across our soils. We know that soil health is related to the biodiversity above ground in so many ways. Certainly, for the functions we get from soil, if we increase the biodiversity, we get better values in biodiversity below ground, better values for potential carbon storage, better buffering as a consequence of higher organic matter for things like pH shifts, those sorts of things.

So, if it stays business as usual, if we continue adding nitrogenous fertilisers as liberally as we have, then we can expect to see acidification continuing. We can expect to see, as I say, this continued trajectory of at least a slight decline continuously year on year, if not catastrophic decline in the near term.

Thank you.

Yes, I agree with Will. I think we've been given an early warning and we need to act on it. Throughout the broader ERAMMP survey—. So, soils is one part; we also report on birds and pollinators and plants and greenhouse gas emissions and a whole wide range of things. Throughout the report, and the Deputy First Minister has also commented, we're not seeing the transformational change that our legislation says we want for our natural environment and our natural resources.

So, we've been given an early warning. When we reported back in 2017, we sort of said we were managing to hold the line. So, we'd had a period of decline from when we really worked our land hard and we were holding the line for soils and we'd managed to halt the decline of some of the biodiversity. But, now, the report quite clearly suggests we're tipping over the edge. And whether that's global volatility in markets in combination with climate extremes or what have you, but it looks like the status quo, business as usual, is not an option.

If we want to actually deliver what we see in our Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015, Environment Act 2021, and now the Agricultural Act 2020 as well, we have to start doing things differently. And the challenge is how we make that happen and how we take the farmers with us to make that happen.

Hopefully, we'll tease that out in further questions. Professor Williams, have you anything on this point?

No, I think Will and Bridget have covered everything.

You can come again. [Laughter.] Jenny.

Good morning. Before I start on the link between soil and food production, I just wanted to pick up on something that Professor Emmet said. You said that we've lost some of our best land to urban development, and I just wondered if you could explain how that's happened. Because Julie James, as the climate change Minister, always assured me that the regulations were in place to ensure that ribbons around centres of population—. We wouldn't allow grade 1 and 2 agricultural land to be used for building mainly houses.

So, the causes, I can't say. So the best and most diverse land is class 1, 2 and 3a. So, when I say that we've lost it, we've used satellite data to look at how much arable and improved grassland do we have and how much urban and woodland do we have. And in the report, we quite clearly show—and it's not just Wales, this is across GB now—that urban has expanded, and woodland has expanded, and we've lost improved grassland and we've lost arable land. And that arable and improved grassland tends to be on class 1, 2 and 3a. So, all I can say is that's just looking from—. The eye from the sky—that's what it's telling us has changed.

Now, locally how that's happened, I'm sorry I can't say, but urban is now 6 per cent of Wales and arable is only 4 per cent. We're shifting, but it's not surprising when you think of it. Where do we put our towns and cities? It tends to be on the coast where the better land is. Where do we want our housing to be? Most people want them by where the jobs are, and that inevitably just means the urban creep. Again, this happens throughout GB. In Europe, that land take is now part of the EU mission that we've got to try and find a way to reuse land rather than net take. But at the moment, all I can say is, as a whole in Wales, we've lost some of our most high-quality agricultural production land.

Okay. This is something that I'll need to put to the Welsh Government.

In your evidence, you've mentioned, I think, all of you, that fertilisers and pesticides deplete the soil. So, what needs to change to maximise sustainable food production?

Shall I take that first? So, I think we need—. There are quite a few practices that we think can reduce the amount of use of manufactured fertiliser. So, for example, the use of legumes, more mixed swards, which will encourage more use of the whole soil profile rather than just the surface, integration of livestock with the arable systems—that's not such an issue for us; it is in England. Just trying to think about some of the—. Just getting more diversity in our landscape. But also, just coming back to a real basic, it is to do the soil testing. So, we do know that not all farmers do do soil testing, so they don't actually know how much fertiliser is needed. So, the risk is you just do it every year because you think you want to, even though it's a cost. So, I think, in the sustainable farming scheme, coming back to that, the fact that we're just going to encourage at least the farmers in the SFS scheme to test their soil, and then report on the action that they take from that, is a good start.

Let's just try and match the inputs of phosphorus, not just nitrogen, phosphorus, PK and other things, to what the crop need actually is. That could reduce things. And then, if we think about the composition of the grassland sward, try and get more rotations in both grassland and in arable, that will all—. Well, the evidence is that that reduces the fertiliser use, and the net profit to farmers actually goes up, because you let your costs go down. You might have a bit less yield, and that is another issue with respect to food security in some of the systems, but, you know, overall, perhaps that's where we have to go. But perhaps Will—

Some of the most progressive farmers are doing that, it's just that so many of the others are just doing what they've always done. Can we really afford to go on doing that?

I suppose, the answer to that is 'no'. We can't keep using chemically derived N for lots of different reasons, at least not as liberally as we do do. If you go back to even basic principles, the Haber-Bosch process itself, for which we derive chemically derived N, or synthetic N, if you like, is extremely carbon intensive. It's one of the most energy-hungry anthropogenic activities of all. So, moving away from that is important. There's also an abundance of nitrogen in our system. We have lots and lots of it. We have a problem with excess nitrogen in so many ways. So, better resource use, efficiency systems, circular economies on farm, mixed farming systems with better nitrogen cascades through the farm—things like that—are a much more appropriate way.

There are, I suppose, lots of individual ideas I could give you for how we could do things differently, not one blanket approach that would work for every farm and every landscape. But if you take a grassland system, for instance, increasing the biodiversity, there is something such as the biodiversity-productivity relationship, so, by virtue of upping the number of species present in the sward, you can—and this was demonstrated by the Jena experiment over in Germany—by having a larger number of species present—16 and greater is what their data was showing for the species composition—you're getting the same dry matter yield as off monocultural grass under a high nitrogen load. So, you can offset the need for nitrogen in that respect by increasing the biomass, and of course there are better effects for us consequently if we do that, i.e. increased biodiversity above ground, increased organic matter into the soil below ground, increased biodiversity below ground, and the knock-on effects, again, from that cascade are more things like, for instance, mycorrhizal fungal associations below ground from that increased biodiversity, and that helps us with phosphorus scavenging.

So you can create ecosystems that are a lot more resilient and a lot more able to capture the resources they require inside that ecosystem if we just shift it away from entirely man-made to working with the natural functions, the natural capital as it is. That's a challenge. I'm not saying it's as easy as we turn around to every farmer in Wales and say, ‘Turn your grassland over to permanent species-rich pasture.’ There are questions that go with that, questions alongside management, productivity, what does that mean for silage, how do we manage that best. Those are questions we can potentially answer, though. And the prevailing evidence so far is that—much of it is done in Ireland; we haven't really caught up quite so well here in Wales and the UK for this research—increasing the diversity in the sward actually has quite a range of production benefits: better milk, with higher omega 3 levels, things like that; better livestock value—so, it might be less meat overall, but it might be a higher quality meat. So, there are certain values to be had within that. The point being, I suppose, to answer your original question, or to go back to that, if we are setting up these systems, we can make them more business efficient because we'll be using less N and we can make them more environmentally efficient, because we're using less N.

Thank you.

I wonder—. Sorry, can I just add briefly, if I may? I completely concur with what's been said about multispecies leys and so on. I would just like to maybe clarify; sometimes there's an assumption that all farmers are liberally applying fertilisers. That is not the case, and we need to be absolutely clear about that, especially in many of the kind of extensive, very low input systems that Wales has.

That's absolutely right.

It does not make financial sense to apply high nitrogen loads to lots of the permanent pastures that are very unresponsive. So, that is an important point to make. I'm not going against the need for the most efficient use of whatever fertiliser is applied.

And also, very briefly, just in terms of soil testing, we have to be a bit mindful of unintended consequences here. We could ask every farm in Wales to test their soils. The recommendations that they get back from the soil testing companies are all focused on yield. So, a lot of those farmers, in terms of what they in theory should be doing, are under-applying fertilisers in terms of producing or increasing their yields, not over-applying. We've seen that multiple times where we've actually worked with farmers and seen what their recommendations are compared to what they are actually applying, and often it’s the case that they are under-applying. So, we've just got to be mindful of that.

You raise an important point there, because, if we've got commercial companies who want to sell fertilisers, the advice they're giving may not be the best advice in terms of the balance between nature, the environment and the whole ecosystem, and, clearly, there's a role here for Government. You mentioned earlier, Professor Williams, that farmers don't always have the money to apply lime when they should be. But, equally, if they don't apply the lime, then their land is going to be constantly depleting in terms of its productivity. Against all this, if you apply fertilisers, you're clearly going to be—you know, pesticides are impacting on nature, and so it's a hugely complex system here. How we support farmers in different ecosystems—uplands, lowlands, et cetera—to think about future generations is a really challenging problem. How do you think we make it clear enough for individual landholders to do the right thing in their particular patch of land?

I remember speaking to one farmer about this piece of research that we did and he said to me, 'I know I've got a lime problem—I just want to know how bad it is.' Those farmers are not ignorant of the fact that they need to apply lime and that they haven't, maybe, in many, many years—maybe going back to the days when grants were available for a lime application; they haven't done so thereafter. So, they're not ignorant of the fact, but the cost of remediating or raising soil pH is pretty, pretty substantial these days—much more substantial than just the sort of, maybe, in many cases, relatively small annual additions or applications of fertiliser. So, it's the yearly costs of fertiliser application versus the fairly, potentially very, substantial one-off hit of a lime application. So, there's no doubt that we need to improve the uptake of soil testing and the actioning on it. I think a key point that Bridget said a few moments ago was farmers reporting what they have done on the back of those soil tests, as opposed to ticking a box to say that they have had a soil test.

But this vicious circle that some are trapped within, that they don't have the capital to undertake those big steps needed, that's exactly—. Well, it's one of the ways that maybe the SFS can step in and incentivise different measures. A lot of farmers would get—. Ultimately, lime pays for itself really well—the return on investment is really good—but it is, no doubt, still a one-off large capital investment.

Thank you. Okay, can I just move us on now to how we might be able to use the land optimally, starting from where we are, given that we have very significant food security issues, as highlighted by Professor Lange? Just-in-time is no longer a system that works, and I'll come back on to that later, but how would you experts think we could move forward in steps that individual farmers would be able to adopt?

I can give it a go. I think Prysor is on to something here. I think in our past we've had the basic annual payment systems, and perhaps we need to think a bit more creatively—low-cost loans. I think SFS is thinking about collaborative—you know, sharing equipment, buying second-hand equipment, really helping with trying to move the industry on in terms of technology and use of data in efficient ways. We've heard complaints that we as scientists in Welsh Gov collect a lot of data but very little of it goes back to the farmers so they can actually act on it, and then they don't have the money to do it. So, perhaps, instead of the annual payment, which keeps the status quo, how are we going to transform? And that probably requires more business thinking hat on. So, is it low-cost loans? Is it sharing of equipment? Is it those kind of more transformational—you know, the training? So, the SFS, there's been a whole discussion about it. I'm very aware there are many elements of it that are going in the right direction, but I fear that it's not transformational enough. It's going to, at best, keep us where we are, and it's not going to deliver the changes we need, neither for the farming industry, which is really struggling, and neither for the environment and for the well-being of the Welsh people.

We need to rethink in a very big way, and I think that's—. When we looked at why we think we might be losing carbon still in our very small arable sector, we looked at a recent paper looking at the rate of rotation in Wales compared to England, and it's much lower here in Wales. So, we think the uptake of what's called regenerative practices seems to be a bit lower here than it is in some areas in England. It's very hard to get that data, because a lot of farmers don't recognise that there's organic, there's regenerative agriculture, there's agroecology—it's quite a range of practices—but I think, whatever you call it, those practices that Will outlined, we just need to encourage that uptake and that risk taking.

Now, that's the life—. How do we encourage risk taking? It's very easy for me to say. So, do you provide a safety net for people who try to transform, whole-systems changes? How do we encourage that system change in a way that means that, economically, people are willing to do it?

Just looking at it from the perspective of the consumer, we all need to change our diets at the moment—it's an absolute car crash. There is research going on into the nutrient density of the food produced, based on the quality of the soil. In the future, we'll all be able, on our phones, to check out the nutrient density of vegetable X on the shelf. So, will the market not drive some of the change that's going to be required? Because, obviously, people are going to get more return for better-quality, more nourishing food.

That isn't how it tends to happen. There is an element of that, absolutely; it will drive technological advancement if there is a price point that can justify, for instance, a technological intervention. Typically, though, what that means at this moment in time is that we buy it from somewhere else, because we're not producing it here. If we want—. If there is a consumer trend that is dictating we want strawberries at a certain time of year—. That's actually a poor example, because we're getting pretty good at growing those in controlled environments, but you can imagine something, a food product, that is challenging to grow in our environment—then we import it in; it's a globalised world.

If we are talking about food security within our borders, then there are some major challenges and some really hard questions we have to answer about how we want to manage our landscapes. It is, I suppose, only going to be controversial to say how we look at our systems currently is not the adequate way to apply a food security perspective. What I mean by that, for instance, is, our uplands, we produce a lot of sheep. I'll make an open declaration beforehand and say I am not against sheep production in our uplands; I am deeply entrenched in the farming communities of Wales, and that is the bastion of our culture, language, a lot of other things—it's important.

Now, if you look at it from a different point of view, we don't consume lamb, as a populace, quite in the same way—it's not a daily part of the diet here; it's not a staple in the same way. We export a lot of that. There are things we could do differently, potentially, with that land and with that landscape—better carbon approaches or something along those lines that might be better, which means we would have to intensify elsewhere. We will have to look at the entire landscape and start making decisions about, 'We put a lot of production here, we put a little production there, we put no production there', and start grading it quite severely in that term and do it on, dare I say it, a triage basis. We have to be looking at this, at what is the absolute required proposition for producing enough food to feed the population. Because the challenges of food production are significant and severe, and I don't think we've really got to grips at all with what the potential for that is.

Professor Williams, we're not about to run out of meat, but we have an absolute deficit on veg and fruit. How could we persuade more farmers to grow for their own local schools, which is obviously what we aspire to be able to do?

I applaud the community food strategy that was launched very recently by the Welsh Government. That kind of initiative will inevitably help to turn the wheel. But I think we also need to be realistic and practical. There is a reason why Wales is dominated by livestock production—we generally have the land for that. Only a few days ago, a kilogram of carrots in many of the supermarkets was only 8p. So, it's a cut-throat industry and the returns from horticulture are extremely challenging, even on a very large scale in Lincolnshire and East Anglia, with much more productive soils.

So, I think it's no small task, but creating the demand surely has to be the first step, and initiatives such as the community food strategy, where the public sector in Wales is going to be spending much more on Welsh-grown produce, that has to be—pardon the pun—the carrot that drives production. Because farmers won't invest the huge, eye-watering amount of investments needed in infrastructure and so on—farmers clearly are not going to be able to do that—unless they know that there's a market for their produce. And if they're competing against 8p per kilo of carrots, then that is a tough market to operate in.

I'm going to have to move this session on; we've had 20 minutes on it.

Okay.

But if we have time at the end, I'll gladly bring you back in on this, Jenny. Luke.

Diolch, Gadeirydd. I'm just thinking about the agricultural land classification system. What are your views on whether that system is working in terms of assessing agricultural soils to determine the appropriate land use for that particular area?

It's not my area of specific expertise. What I can say from what I understand of it is it's based on outmoded data, quite simply. The climate data that it's predicated on is 40, 50 years old at this stage, which is not representative of where we are at all. There are, I suppose, different ways you could look at what it would mean for the values of our land, depending on whether we get wetter or drier. If we get drier, it might improve our land, but, equally, all the predictions are that Wales is likely to get wetter, and that we are going to be a net beneficiary from climate change in terms of rainfall, if you want to call it a beneficiary. So, as a consequence, what that does to the value of our land in terms of the best and most versatile classification is difficult to entirely predict at this minute in time. But the point is, if you're working with out-of-date data, the likelihood is we've got either an overestimation or an underestimation of the quality of our land currently, and that's not going to be helpful.

Perhaps if I can just come in. The soils policy team in Welsh Gov has done work on trying to improve that climate data and look at how that has adjusted the agricultural land classification and what that means to us going forward. I absolutely applaud them for doing that. If you want to know more about ALC, I'd recommend going and talking to your soils policy team, and also talk to ADAS, who've done a lot of work for them in terms of looking at this.

The only other thing I would say is that the granularity of ALC is based on the soils mapping that was done by Cranfield, which is a superb resource, and it's now hopefully going to become freely available to everyone. I live on Ynys Môn, and literally in my garden I have pH 4 over there and pH 7 over there, just because of the undulation of the topography of our fabulous landscape. So, if you're in a floodplain, it's probably okay to say, 'Yes, this is all one soil type'. But the soil surveyors did not go and take a soil core every 5m all across Wales; they stood on top and they assessed, and they went, 'That's probably a gley; that's probably a podzol'.

When it comes to local decisions, the ALC map is the first step, but then you really need to go and do local assessments and get a professional soil surveyor in to say how much of this land is actually 1, 2, 3A, 3B, 3C, because otherwise, you could make some sweeping judgments about the homogeneity of soil. One of the challenges and joys we have as soil scientists is how heterogeneous it is across the landscape, as you go about, literally going from metre to metre. So, that's just a caution about ALC. It's a blunt but useful tool, if we adapt it with the new climate data, as Will said.

If I can just come back to the soil map that you were referring to there. With the Welsh Government and what their intentions are with that soil map, are they going down the right track, or is there something they need to do a bit better on that front?

With our soil mapping, what was done back in the 1970s by the soil use survey, or whatever they were called—I can't remember now—that went into Cranfield, no-one's ever going to have the money to go and completely redo that in another way. Digital soil mapping is the way to go. There are now some huge EU initiatives that are using that and using machine learning to develop new maps and change maps that is free for everyone to use.

Welsh Gov permitted us to give the data we've got from ERAMMP into those EU initiatives, because we want to make those maps better and more usable and, critically, free for everyone to use. Because that's what's really stymied all of us in the soil science community—we've had a whole lot of IP and licensing issues in some of the soils data.

Wales, I know, are doing their own thing, and I would just encourage you, if you're not aware of GeoHub and SoilGrids and these EU initiatives, which basically—. And they're still doing the UK, bless them, even though we're out. They're still mapping the UK, and we're sending our data there, so that we can all, collectively, as a European and UK community, get better maps that can actually track the state and change of soil health. I just applaud the people for doing that.

Professor Williams, oes gennych chi unrhyw beth i'w ychwanegu yn fanna?

Diolch, Luke. Just to reiterate Bridget's comments on the granularity of the ALC maps. They're fine for making decisions on a landscape scale, or a national land-use policy discussion, perhaps, but having that finer scale granularity is really important when it comes to the actual decisions at the end of the day. I guess much of the discussion so far has been focused on agriculture and food production—we want different things from our land. It can help inform the discussion around the trade-offs between different ecosystem services. We had a discussion a few moments ago about acidification. There's a lot of land in Wales that is acid grassland and we want it to remain that way, from a biodiversity perspective. So, again, it's making those finer decisions on a local scale as opposed to using it for overarching national decisions.

Sam.

Thank you very much, Chair. Carbon sequestration was a big part of the SFS discussions that have been going on over the last couple of years, and there's been a panel looking at carbon sequestration that the Deputy First Minister brought forward, but what role do you think soils can play in carbon sequestration here in Wales? Dr William Stiles.

It is a contested topic, this one, as to how much carbon we can actually get into soil, whether we are able to increase it. I suppose there's a difference to consider between the concept of—I've seen it mentioned in the thing—where we can get to saturation, but also what we can do in terms of restoration.

Increasing the organic matter levels in much of our pristine grassland in Wales, you're not going to do much there. You're in an environment where organic matter input is high. And organic matter, it should be pointed out, I suppose, which is obviously the reservoir, if you will, of where soil organic carbon sits, that is a dynamic fraction of the soil that changes annually, that can change through management. We can alter it in a range of different ways, but it is an equilibrium between the inputs annually from plants and the exports annually from decomposition.

If you have a system that is healthy and, as I say, in an equilibrium state, or in a steady state, the amount of outputs should equal the amount of inputs and it will stay relatively stable. If you look at a soil that is degraded, such as an arable soil, where the extraction through harvest will mean that the organic matter is decreasing, then there is a huge potential for increasing the organic matter content and, therefore, the carbon content of that soil; you could do. 'Not under that management' is, I suppose, the caveat phrase to add to that point.

So, it depends on the system, it depends where you are. If you're looking overall, we will be sequestering in a healthy peat. If you've got peat systems that are functioning as peat, that are not being drained and emitting C, then they will be sequestering at about 1 mm of growth a year, which is obviously quite a major carbon reservoir. But generally speaking, if you change the management over towards being more holistic, say, less focused on heavy fertiliser inputs, heavy or intensive management systems, then increasing organic matter is possible where it's already low, and maintaining it where it's already high is entirely feasible.

I was very pleased that the committee said the key point about soils and soil carbon is to not make them a net source; they should be helping us. Currently, they are contributing. And that is just shocking—

All are contributing, or—?

As a net. If you think about Wales as the round, soils are a net contributor. Because arables are emitting, and peatlands. Peatlands are 4 per cent of Wales, but they're contributing 9 per cent of the net agriculture and land use, land use change and forestry inventory. As Will said, a lot of our soils are just stable, a lot of our pastures, we can't find trends in those, but the arable is going down, the peatland is going down. So, the first thing is that we must stop that. And then the question is how can you get more carbon into soil.

We have done a review for the Welsh Government on the opportunities and limitations, where I got together some of the top soil carbon scientists in the UK, and that came out two years ago—Pete Smith from the University of Aberdeen, people who do the LULUCF inventories. We put together all the range of studies. I know the committee has got a few people who love to pick out one study that says, 'Oh, you can get 6 tonnes per hectare of carbon dioxide equivalent per hectare per year'. The problem is, if you put together all 50 studies that have looked at, say, the potential of no-till, you get anything from 0.1 tonnes to 6 tonnes, exactly because of what Will's just said, that your starting point was different, your climate was different, your soil was different, your management was different.

So, I get really quite upset when some people pluck one study out of the air and then sell it to all the farmers everywhere saying, 'You could get this', because you can't. We know there's a range. So, what we try to do is, if you aggregate it all up, think where we are currently, arable is only 4 per cent of Wales. So to increase carbon in arable, 4 per cent of our land is arable—there's just not enough arable to suddenly capture all the carbon from all the ruminant animals.

To answer your question in brief, it's an important part, but it's not a silver bullet. Our estimate was it could offset 5 to 10 per cent of current agriculture greenhouse gas emissions. We should do it because we're going to need 5 to 10 per cent from that, 5 to 10 per cent from this, 5 to 10 per cent from that. But also soil organic matter and carbon is one of the key indicators of soil health. You have to think of it as the fluff in the soil. It's what opens up the soil, gets the air, the oxygen, lets the roots in, lets the water in. So we should do carbon in soil just for soil health and food production and environment things. Oh, and by the way, it'll help you with a bit of your soil carbon offsetting.

There are some people, unfortunately, who go around that say, 'With soil carbon and a few hedges, we can just carry on as we're doing before and get to net zero.' Most people I know say that is not correct. You will always find a few scientist outliers, we're a community like anyone else, but please listen to the majority and the real people who are experts and have got international reputation in this area.

Some really comprehensive points were made there from Will and Bridget. Just to go back to some of the more practical measures that farmers might be able to do, the measurements within ERAMMP are of the top 15 cm of soil. Ideally, if the budget was there, I'm sure ERAMMP would love to sample to greater soil depth. And we do know that the majority of the topsoil of Wales is probably at the point of saturation in terms of carbon, and therefore the potential for additional sequestration is limited.

There might be greater scope to enhance sequestration in deeper soil layers. That relates back to points that Will was raising about the benefits of multispecies leys and so on that have got deeper rooting systems that therefore pump their carbon or root exudates into deeper soil. And once that carbon is in those deeper layers, there's less disturbance of that subsoil and there's less microbial activity to release that carbon thereafter and so on. So there is some potential.

While the study hasn't been done to look at the potential from deeper sequestration in Welsh soils, I think if we had ERAMMP data going to deeper layers, then that would help that. But, certainly, there's been some work done elsewhere to show that there is potential in those deeper layers of soil. But, as Bridget says, it's not the silver bullet. It's one of the answers, but it's not 'the' answer.

Thank you. That's very helpful. Some members of this committee, including myself, would have gone to Lake Vyrnwy and seen the peatland restoration project that RSPB are leading on, and that's great. Interesting points on the arable, around the 8 per cent loss of carbon sequestration in arable soils. So what is it that we can be doing, or what good examples already exist within arable agriculture—cover cropping, introducing of vermiculture—what is it that can be done to restore that? If there is equilibrium in our grasslands, if arable is a key problem area, what can we be doing or what is already being done to improve arable?

You can increase general soil health. As you mentioned there, cover cropping would be a great example. It depends on the crops you're looking at as to the degree of degradation and the impact they will have, but the bottom line is, again, you come back to this dynamic relationship between input from plant roots, et cetera, and removal from the system through decomposition. If you have a crop that is impermanent by virtue, that has narrow rooting systems that are dug out, turned over and tilled every year, you're going to struggle to input organic matter into that soil without some intervention. The only intervention I could suggest really would be farmyard manure or something as a replacement to that. There are challenges surrounding that too. There are connotations why that might have a positive and also, simultaneously, a negative effect. I think you have to look at it differently. An arable system, by virtue, is somewhere you’re going to look at and say, ‘We want food from that area, we’re not going to get high soil health from that area, not with our current systems of management anyway.' So, perhaps that is the area where you intensify, get as much food as you can, and look to extensify elsewhere. That would be a different modus operandi, perhaps, for your philosophy for how you treat the land.

Okay. Professor?

Yes, I think cover crops is clearly one, because, if nothing else, that stops erosion, which, as I’ve already said, should break all your hearts. But, it’s rotations. It is in terms of trying to get some deeper crops. There are alley croppings. There is also potential for trying to get silvopastoral systems in, and mixing up our arables, trying to get some of the animal waste into our arable system.

I’d also think about food waste. The Netherlands are doing extraordinary things with respect to the circular economy, and I can recommend people to come to really advise this committee about how we create all that food waste, get it back, turn it into compost, on which to then put that bio-organic matter back onto our land, because, at the end of the day, it’s quite hard.

Arable, you are cropping every year, but perhaps you can have a break crop with some of the legumes, and perhaps we can get some of the food waste composted. Some countries have actually now made that into a national policy, where all this stuff has to go through. You make sure you heat it to ensure biosecurity, and then it goes back onto the land. We really need to think about that. Some of the waste, in terms of bakery goods and other things, is really quite shocking, and we’ve just created this linear system. So, there are kind of the regular things that we think of with regenerative agriculture, but then there are some really breaking the whole system and rethinking it that we need to do, I think.

But before I bring in Professor Williams, that feels—. That’s common sense, is it not, adding back in organic matter that would have otherwise gone to waste, into soils that are being degraded? Why is that not law already, and 'mainstream', especially in a small country that is as agriculture reliant as Wales?

Very often, the whole chain isn't set up, and the distribution networks to create those biocomposite things that break it down. That takes investment, and we're not a rich nation. So, it takes a political piece of thought to say, 'We're going to do this. It's going to take money.' But you've got to think about the distribution and the whole lines of chain, and whether you do that on a local basis, rather than creating one giant factory in the middle of Wales, and thinking of all the greenhouse gases to transport everything there, we perhaps need to think more about local hubs and things like that.

So, it takes a little bit of thought, and throwing everything out of the box and starting again, but you're all aware of the whole idea of the circular economy, and waste, there is no waste; it should just be resource efficiency. But I will just tell you one really horrible statistic, which is that one of the biggest sources of waste to landfill is soil, because—

Can I come in?

I'll bring you in now, just let Professor Emmett finish her point.

Oh, sorry. It's soil because we don't have a way of cycling it. It's easier to take it to landfill than to store it and then use it somewhere else. So, we've just got a whole mindset of this linear thing. It's one of the things in the EU, a statistic that came out as a shock, that uncontaminated soil goes to landfill just because it's labelled as a waste, so it goes there, when, as I've told you, it takes thousands of years to build up soil, so what are we doing with it? But just think of all that bio, the food and organic matter, which we should be able to recycle back.

I'm just going to bring Hefin in. Hefin.

Yes, I just—[Inaudible.]

Sorry, you've gone on mute, you must have.

I think somebody's unmuted me. I just want to ask a question about anaerobic digestion and the facilities around that. There's an anaerobic digester in my constituency, which is based on private land, which is kind of farmland that's become industrial land. The problem we've got is that it's deeply unpopular where it's situated, and it's very close to a medium-density village, and it's caused problems over time. So, the issue isn't just creating routes to solving these problems; it's also public buy-in.

Can I ask the extent to which mass anaerobic digesters are needed to recycle food waste, and the extent to which there would be public buy-in across the board if that became a mass production kind of policy?

So, my understanding is that anaerobic digestion is not the only way to do this. So, there are other ways. In the talk I heard from the Netherlands, it was about feeding bakery goods directly to chickens, which then produced high-phosphorous stuff, and instead of that just being put on land and causing problems, can we recycle bag that and create a chain for there? But, I have to say, anaerobic digestion is just one way, and I think that we might have gone down a line there. There are other ways of creating high-value products from our waste, other than anaerobic digestion. But, Will, I think that you were trying to come in.

I think the thing to recognise with food waste at the moment is that it's not one set of items. It's very, very diverse. You've got animal products, vegetable products, you've got materials that are challenging to utilise, challenging to recycle. You would have to have much better systems for separating these out to begin with in order to achieve this. So, it does come down to infrastructure. It's entirely possible; there are really good examples globally of what can be done.

In terms of AD, it's a great system for getting the energy and nutrients back out, but the amount of slurry that it does produce is surprising. I think it's lost on many people quite the scale of the production of digestate as a consequence of anaerobic digestion. Applying that to land is entirely possible. That's obviously a very good source of nutrients. It can be very, very high in ammoniacal nitrogen, which can be problematic and can lead to acidification that way. But, more importantly, because it's high in ammonia, if you're surface spreading, you'll get lots and lots of ammonia emissions. So, you have to have the right technology for direct drilling into the ground. That's the thought as it stands at this minute in time, or the evidence as it stands at this moment. So, yes, we could recycle our systems, yes, we should have systems for it, but you're going to need a really detailed think and rethink about how we're managing our resources currently.

Just quickly, Chair: what percentage of food waste recycling through anaerobic digestion would you recommend?

It's out of my area, I'm sorry. All I would encourage you to do is to have another inquiry on food waste and the creation of a circular economy, and link it back to how, then, that can help our soils, just to keep the link going.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you.

The point I'd just add to that is that there is a market in it now because obviously it is profitable to do it because of the support for anaerobic digestion. So, actually saying to put it into landfill or to send it out onto land to regenerate, you're in a competitive market, you are, and anaerobic digestion is sucking up huge amounts of product to generate energy and gas.

The one real beg I would have—

If I could jump in.

Oh, sorry, Prysor, go for it.

Professor Williams.

If I can come in for a second. Thank you. We've got some—. Wales is doing really well in terms of recycling and reducing food waste and, on recycling rates, we're the third best in the world. Only last week, I took 35 students to a composting facility taking in 25,000 tonnes of food waste and green waste every year on Ynys Môn. We've got these systems already, and all of that compost is either offered to the local community or taken by farmers. So, there's a lot of that going on already. Most composted food waste—well, almost all of it—eventually ends up on agricultural land. The problem that we often have is where that waste is generated versus where that waste is composted, and the transport, as Bridget referred to, associated with that. So, if it's over a certain distance, quite simply, Sam, you'll know this as a farmer yourself, the transport costs outweigh the benefits and it doesn't happen. So, inevitably, most of it—and this applies to digestate from AD plants as well—is returned to land quite locally, where the waste originated maybe quite far away. So, again, it's a cost, an economics thing.

The one other point that maybe hasn't been mentioned, but which I think should be mentioned because it's under a lot of political scrutiny—maybe not at the moment in Wales, but certainly outside of Wales—is biosolids, or sewage sludge. There are calls to ban, to prohibit, the land application of biosolids because of potential issues with microplastics, with pathogens and so on. Parking those other issues to the side for a moment, from a soil health perspective, or a soil organic matter perspective specifically, there is no doubt that biosolids are a valuable source of carbon for soils. So, that should be borne in mind.

And just a last point on AD. We've got many AD systems operating very well across Wales. What we've got to be mindful of is the differentiation between waste-fed AD systems and crop-fed AD systems. Often in the AD systems, maybe originally the intention was for them to take in waste, it could be slurry waste and so on, and the amount of methane that is generated from slurry, for instance, is relatively low because the cow has already generated that methane. So, often what then happens is crops are grown, maize in particular, and if you go to Herefordshire on the Welsh border, there are quite vast areas of maize grown for AD, and that is not good from an environmental perspective or a soil health perspective. So, AD done well is fantastic, and the fertiliser replacement value of the digestate, if that digestate is applied appropriately—referring back to Will's comments—the fertiliser replacement value is really, really high. So, it's a fantastic tool if managed well, and avoiding crop-fed AD is something that we all need to be mindful of.

Okay?

Thank you, Chair. Hefin has taken my question around AD that I was going to go on to next, so I've completed my set of questions. So, thank you.

Lovely. Hannah.

Diolch, Cadeirydd. It's been touched on previously in the session this morning around the work and reports of ERAMMP. In consideration of the committee's work, what would you say were the top take-home messages for this committee from the recently published report on trends in soil health in Wales over the last 10 years?

So, the three things that worry me the most that I think I would want to pass on to you are, first, the compaction. I will emphasise, we are still not at a trigger value where it would be an emergency reaction, we're below that, but I really think we should take heed that so many soils are showing levels of compaction. We need to think about that.

The nutrient levels. I totally buy what Prysor says. Much of our extensive acid grasslands, they don't receive anything. I'm not talking about them. I'm talking about our improved grass and arable. There's evidence, and it's very odd evidence, because fertiliser use overall, according to the British fertiliser survey, has gone down and yet the phosphorus levels have gone up in our improved grassland, and that means a risk to waters. You know, 19 per cent of improved grasslands now have phosphorus levels that make them a direct risk to waters. And we already know there are inquiries about water, and we're trying to control that, but unfortunately the agricultural pollution Act only deals with nitrogen, not phosphorus, which is a real shame. So, those are the two big things.

My third thing—you're making me choose a third one—okay, I'm doing a third one. So, we haven't talked about this, we're going to come to it, but the other element of our report is to assess the outcome from Glastir. So, this was our agri-environment scheme from 2013 to 2023. Our results suggest very little, if any, improvement in soil health due to Glastir. In fact, overall, Glastir has delivered some benefits for woodlands and hedges, but for biodiversity and many other elements, it's not caused the transformation we were hoping it would. So, the third message I would have is: are we going to learn the lessons from that with the SFS? Are we going to encourage our farmers, as we were just talking about, to do more? And are we going to create new novel systems that will actually move Wales into the twenty-first century and away from the past?

And I'll give you one statistic that some people find quite shocking, but others not. ADAS did for us a farmer practice survey where, for over 15 years, they've been going to a set of robustly selected farmers and said, 'What have you done in response to the payments you got from Glastir?' And only 30 per cent to 35 per cent of farmers said they actually changed their management practices in response to the payments.

So, what our Glastir payments have been doing is protecting our current systems of farming, and probably past practices that were paid for in Tir Gofal and Tir Cynnal, the previous agri-environment schemes. So, what Glastir has done is sort of said, 'More of the same', and that's going to cause—. The objectives of Glastir were to maintain and improve. At best, we've maintained; we've definitely not improved for most of our natural environment.

The farmers did say it had improved their economics. Of course it has, because that meant they had money, and they've said that improved their economic system. Some of them, 30 per cent to 50 per cent, said they had started to do some diversification and climate change adaptation, which is all good, but in terms of the outcomes that we can find, either on land that was actually in Glastir or how that then cascaded out to the national trends, we can't see those improvements that we as a nation have said we want.

So, we have the data now. Are we going to just do the SFS such that, in another 10 years, we'll have another committee meeting and go, 'We haven't done those improvements', or are we going to be brave and actually encourage more transformational change? So, those are my three things.

Can I just make the point, though, that you said 35 per cent said they hadn't changed their farming practice—

No, that they had.

Oh, they had changed.

Thirty to 35 per cent had changed.

But a considerable number would have just gone from one environmental scheme to another scheme, and that would sort of hide the fact that—

They'd done the changes 10 years ago. So, we've protected the investment Welsh Government's done for the last two decades through our various agri-environment schemes. So, yes, we've protected the investment, so you can see it's a good thing, but then we did say we didn't just want to maintain, we wanted to improve, and by maintaining either our traditional systems or what we'd encouraged through Tir Cynnal and Tir Gofal, whatever, most of the majority of farmers had not changed what they'd done in response to Glastir management payments. So, in a way, what we were hoping for was this gradual improvement over time—there are lags ecologically in the system—and what we're finding is that's not happening. We're not seeing—. If you just keep going, you don't keep seeing improvement and improvement. We've plateaued, and possibly due to climate extremes and other issues, as I was describing, we're now seeing some real problems with our soil health and, actually, in some of our biodiversity and other metrics that we report.

Thank you. Hannah.

Thanks, Chair. Just going back to the work of the programme again, in any of your views, really, could it be adapted or improved to provide better information on soils?

Prysor's already said we should go to depth.

Yes, okay. And does it receive sufficient funding? The answer, though, is 'no', isn't it?

Well, I've worked with Welsh Gov enough and, coming and asking for money, you've got to cut something. This current round was already cut, and we had huge discussion with NRW and the Welsh Gov what to cut, and so birds and pollinators were cut, some other things were cut, and we actually did fewer locations, what have you. So, at that time, me saying, 'But we need to go deeper on soil'—because I'm a soil scientist and I love soil—the plant people and the bird people and the pollinator people would have said, 'Hang on a minute'. So, of course we should go deeper.

Also, I will just point out that we didn't repeat the soil biodiversity measurements, and that's a real shame, so we have no idea if our mycorrhizal associations, which is the way plants extract phosphorus out of this, we don't know if that's gone up, and we did not have enough money to do any contaminant work, so we do not know about antimicrobial resistance in soil, we do not know about control chemicals in soil. We've got the samples in store and we can do it. But if I'm just going to compare Wales to what the EU is setting up—. Hopefully you'll know that there's an EU soil monitoring law; every nation in the EU will have to do a soil national monitoring programme, and there's a suite of measurements they have to do. We do two thirds of them in ERAMMP, but we don't do the other third. So, in five, 10 years, we are not going to have the soil monitoring information equivalent to what everyone in the EU will have. Now, I know it's not a competition, but a lot of thought by a lot of soil scientists has gone into what we should be measuring, and I would just alert you all that we're only doing two thirds of that currently. We're not going to depth, and we're not doing the contaminants and pollution, and we're not doing repeat measurements on biodiversity. We're also not doing subsoil compaction. So, there are a few measurements we should add in, but I'm very aware that if I go back to my team and say, 'So, that means we're doing fewer birds and pollinators and ponds and plants and historic features', I'm not going to be popular. It's an overall balance and we just try and work very closely with our Welsh Gov partners to try and get a balanced portfolio within the budget that we have.

I don't know whether Dr Stiles or Professor Williams have anything to add.

The only point I would make is if you want to know about soil health, you need to know about soil biodiversity. We talk about organic matter constantly, because it's the easy thing to check and to measure for. So, obviously, it's a big regulator of how the soil functions, the nutrient reservoir et cetera, and it also includes the living fraction, the active biology, but understanding the composition of that food web, the composition of those organisms, understanding how that waxes and wanes, tells us everything we need to know about how that system's going to behave. So, if we're not monitoring that—. It isn't an easy thing to monitor, I would suggest. It is a really technical thing to look at—and mesofauna, which are the ones that are not microscopic, not unicellular, but you still require a microscope to be able to identify them. It's challenging. It requires really specialist skills. Unfortunately, to put a blunt point on it, you have to pay for that, I'm afraid, and that is something that we should be including in the monitoring programme.

Professor Williams.

Just to chip in, we did a baseline. We have got the samples. We got a paper in Nature—for those of you who don't know, that's the top journal. We got a paper. We did one of the most complete soil—. So, we know where the fungi are, we know where the bacteria are, we know where the soil animals are. I just want to emphasise, we just couldn't repeat it to report on change. But we have got that investment, and that's an extraordinary resource that most countries don't have.

Professor Williams, did you want to add anything to this particular section?

No, that's fine, Chair. Thank you.

Thank you. Hannah.

Just one final quick point from me, if I may. The Welsh Government 2022—I forget the years now—Welsh soil evidence review, which was intended as a foundation for future soil policy development, are you familiar with that? Do you agree with its findings or do you have anything that you think should be added?

Well, it didn't mention ERAMMP, which was a little disappointing, and I'm not quite sure what went wrong there. But, in fairness, we've just brought out our report now. So, I would strongly advise the Welsh Gov's soils policy team to have a relook at their policy and their evidence report. Because, in fairness, this is the most complete, most up-to-date data, and, in a way, they need to loop back around and perhaps think about what that means.

In terms of the strategy that they published, I found it hard to disagree with anything. They went through compaction, they went through nutrients, they went through organic matter. They've got all the issues, but, in terms of the evidence policy review, it now needs to have a think and include the data that we've just reported.

Thank you. We're in the final straight, with Hefin having the last set of questions.

Well, it's been such a thorough set of responses, I'm not sure there's much more to ask other than what regulatory measures, what policy areas that haven't already been covered would you like to see the Welsh Government picking up to support this area? It's basically a chance to tell us anything that you think we haven't covered that needs to be covered today.

As it's a catch-all, I'll ask Dr Stiles to speak first, then I'll come to Professor Emmett, and then I'll go to Professor Williams.

I suppose the first point to make is I think we're very privileged here in Wales in the sense that we do have a monitoring programme. That is something that is up and going and it's relatively unique globally from that point of view. So, it's a good start in that regard. How we're translating any kind of findings into what is applied on the ground is less clear to me. I'm not quite sure how these things will inevitably get translated to the farmer as such. Obviously, there are the policy vehicles, SFS, et cetera, what they look like and how they'll be delivered on the ground, of course. But, I think there's a lot of ambiguity for me still as to what the rate of change is and how that change will be applied, and what we can expect to see. I don't know how you offer me greater clarity on that, though, to be honest with you. That is a challenge in that regard. So, yes, I think that's really where I would come down to from—. I'm sure, when I hear my colleagues speak, something will pop into my head, but, at this minute in time, I think increasing the monitoring programme very slightly would be good, increasing the amount that we can do within it, including biodiversity repeat measurements, et cetera. Beyond that, I would say, yes, it's all a good start so far.

Okay. Thank you.

National minimum standards. We can do it for soil. It was in the agricultural Act consultation, as I understand it. It might be picked up in a second, but we can do it. So, within the SFS currently, as I understand the consultation, outcomes in habitat land will be assessed and provided for farmers. So, it's not actions, it's whether they've managed to maintain habitat in good condition. We could absolutely do that for soil. We need national minimum standards for soil.

CEH—sorry to brand ourselves—have already created benchmarks, depending on what soil type you have, what climate zone you're in, and what land use type you have. So, we created over 130 benchmarks. This is for Great Britain, but we could do it for Wales, which would enable farmers to basically benchmark and create standards, which would mean over time—. I don't say we do this tomorrow, but I do think we should introduce them so that farmers have a goal to aim for, and that they can start with flexibility, with support, thinking about, 'Well, I'm in the bottom 10 per cent of carbon in my soil, for my type of soil, my climate, my what have you. How do I at least get to the middle ground? How do I even get into the top level of what's possible in my soil?'

So, we've got the data, and I think national minimum standards should cover the things that I was talking about. I think it should be national minimum standards. You should not be exceeding your nitrogen or your phosphorus. You should have a minimum amount of organic matter. You should be within the pH range that we know is good for efficient production. What's the other one? Oh, compaction. You shouldn't have erosion or compaction on your soil, possibly just using a visual assessment.

So, we should have a national indicator, national minimum standards that say, in your soil, you should have those basic characteristics. If you get that right, the biodiversity will come. It's like a house; if the house doesn't have a roof, you're not going to live in it, and if the house doesn't have any food, you're not going to be in it, or if it's full of pollution, you're not going to live in it. If we just create a soil that has got a lot of oxygen and air and organic matter and not contaminated, the biodiversity will come. So, let's just create a national minimum standard that says, 'We've got the structure. It's not contaminated, it's got enough organic matter, it's not too acid', and farmers are encouraged to monitor that and respond to it and make their soil fit and be at least above that minimum standard.

Okay. Professor Williams.

I guess the vehicle to deliver lots of the improvements that we all wish to see will be the sustainable farming scheme. But what worries me in that respect is the fact that the scheme is opt-in and, potentially, you could foresee that those farms that are more focused on production and, inevitably, are likely to be more intensive, are the least likely to opt in. I mean, there's a lot of detail about the SFS that we don't know at this stage in terms of payment rates and so on, but that's an assumption that I guess we could make. So, I guess that's really where the national minimum standards come in, which Bridget's just referred to, because if we do not get the uptake of SFS that we would all like to see, if the budget isn't there or whatever, then we've got to be aware of not racing to the bottom. Maybe some say that if we sign trade deals with countries that are not subject to the same kind of regulations and requirements and so on, Welsh farmers will be outcompeted. There is certainly an element of truth in that, but we shouldn't also try to race to the bottom in terms of standards, given the importance of soils for agricultural systems.

My other point, maybe, that hasn't been mentioned is the potential that there is. Often, the constraint in all of this is funding and, as we've just heard, that is the case for ERAMMP, but, for SFS, there will be a funding constraint and so on. That's the world that we operate within. There is no doubt there's a very, very substantial amount of money sitting out there from various private investors. And that could be looked at as a threat because there is no doubt that it could lead to greenwashing. It could lead to farmers maybe selling their carbon credits when, in fact, they need them themselves, and so on and so forth. And the carbon market is no doubt a wild west at the moment and needs much tighter regulation. However, that, to me, is not a reason not to explore how we can marry public funding, SFS, with private funding. It's quite complicated in terms of who owns what—if the Welsh Government have paid for this particular measure, who owns the carbon, who owns the biodiversity, and so on? It can get quite complicated. But that's not enough of a reason not to explore it, I would say, because, used well, I think it could deliver huge benefits for Welsh soils, for Welsh farms, for the environment more broadly. So, one message that I would like to finish off on is let's explore how we can marry public and private investment to bring to the table the budget that is needed to deliver the change that we all wish to see.

Thank you, Professor Williams. I might be wrong, but I think you used the terminology 'carbon credits' there, and I could see Sam wanting to come in straight away on that, because I'd agree with you about the wild west analogy at the moment.

Yes. Thank you, Chair. It's a slightly wider point, but it got me thinking around the Welsh Government strategy that it's been talking about with regard to timber and forestry plantations in Wales and the potential impact that certain types of forestry can have on soils. I was just wondering whether there was any thought around that. Professor Williams, we'll start with you.

Just briefly, it's all about the right tree in the right place, isn't it—that old saying. We definitely do not want to be planting trees on the peatlands that we have got and that are a store of carbon, or possibly even in some cases sequestering carbon. Even if they are emitting carbon at the moment, we still do not want to be planting trees in those kinds of environments. So, the right tree in the right place, yes. And I think, on silvopasture, silvoarable, agroforestry—call it what you like—we can integrate trees in the farmed landscape and that can bring benefits to carbon sequestration, to soil health, also to animal health and productivity, and shelter and shade in these extreme climates that we're going to be experiencing much more of, and so on. So, I do not see this thing as the clash that others see. I think we just need to be a bit cleverer about how we put the right tree in the right place. But, absolutely, Sam, then, in the same breath, there are many cases where we do not want to be planting trees and drying up our wetlands and releasing the carbon that they've stored over many, many years.

Okay, and, just on that point then, is it that certain trees actually acidify the soil? So, is there a type of tree that we should be looking at more so in favour of planting? You talk about the right tree in the right place: what is the right tree, in that sense, so that we're not creating further damage to the soil? Are we looking at domestic, native species only?

Just briefly—I'm sure Will and Bridget would like to come in—what we look to plant—. I mean, you know, the climate is changing; what we thought was a good idea to plant 20 years ago may not be the most resilient species to plant for a climate-changed Wales. So, I think we need to broaden our scope in terms of what we plant. This is not really my area, forestry, but, again, there's a lot of expertise in this area, and if you call the right people there's a lot of work that's been done looking at how conifer plantations can acidify soils and streams and so on. So, yes, bring the right people, and you'll have no shortage of good solutions.

Diolch yn fawr. Professor Emmett.

I think we need to be equitable to the forestry industry, as well as the agricultural industry. As we've just heard, the agricultural industry does acidify soil if they fertilise without lime, and yet we get at the forestry industry because they planted Sitka spruce, which, because of the sheer growth, acidifies soil. So, they both do. So, they've both got to manage that, and they both—. There are ways of doing that in a lot of forestry. So, I think this push against any conifers is inappropriate. It's a monoculture, probably they need to do more diverse systems, but they've got to make a profit, just like the agricultural system. And some of our soils are very good at growing trees. And for some of the industry, the pulp industry, we can grow those very well and quite quickly. So, I think we need a mix of forestry systems. And let's just try and create a level playing field and not do higher levels for what the forestry industry has to deliver compared to the agricultural industry.

Can I just go back to carbon credits for soil health?

Yes.

Working in the EU, we are hearing that a lot of companies, which we're bringing in and talking to them—you know, the food companies, the drink companies, what have you—are moving away from carbon credits to what's called 'value chains' and thinking about soil health in the round. The greenwashing and the carbon credits and the fact the EU has just decided that they're temporary has really made everyone think, 'You know what? Instead, we want to create levy systems, or what have you, where we create branding of our products and our companies, where people recognise that we look after the land better, we encourage nature, we restore our soil, we look after our soil.' And so, more and more, there's a real interest, because the public purse isn't big enough, as to how we do the private and public. But I think, carbon credits, in 20 years, we're going to see that as a very narrow way of thinking about where we need to go, and we need to think more about value chains. I would love Wales to be a leader in the field of how we partner public and private to do major landscape restoration projects, and help our farmers to actually deliver the transformation that we want. At the moment, I'm not quite seeing how we get into that. But there's the Green Finance Institute, Finance Earth, there are these companies that are trying to bring these things together. And I would just encourage Welsh Gov to work with those organisations to try and—. Because we keep hearing there's billions out there, if only we can find out how to make sure that they are robust and we don't go down the greenwashing or wishing line. Thanks.

Thank you all for your evidence. That concludes the question session that we've had this morning. You'll be sent a transcript of the proceedings today, and I hope you'll be able to cast your eye over it. If there are any issues with the transcript, please contact the committee services, and obviously they'll address those concerns with you. But, once again, I thank you for your written evidence and your oral evidence and being so generous with your time for the committee's inquiry. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you, everyone, for your questions. Really interesting.

Yes, diolch yn fawr, thank you.