EURAF Policy Briefing #13 – November 2021. tinyurl.com/aejx9kxj. 

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The “Soil Strategy for 2030”

On the 17th November the EU Commission released a Communication titled “Soil Strategy for 2030” (Com-2021-699): aiming to “reap the benefits of healthy soils for people, food, nature and climate”. It offers a policy framework to assess the threats to soil quality and to undertake soil restoration: pointing out that soil degradation effects go beyond national borders and that a lack of dedicated EU legislation has been a “major cause for the alarming state of our soils”.

The first proposal for a framework directive for the protection of soils was made in 2006 (Com-2006-232), titled the  Soil Thematic Strategy. Six years later (Com-2012-46) the Commission reported on the poor implementation of this policy and underlined that at the March 2010 Environment Council a minority of Member States had blocked further progress on the proposed Soil Framework Directive. In response to a resolution adopted by MEPs in April 2020 (link), a  consultation and roadmap on a “new EU soil strategy” was opened in November 2020 (ares-2020-6391319) and the new publication is the response to this consultation. It is accompanied by a Staff Working Document (SWD-2021-323). The aim is to unveil a dedicated legislative proposal on soil health, but not until 2023, following further consultation.

Despite this delay EURAF welcomes the Communication’s recognition that agro-ecology and agroforestry are at the heart of sustainable soils management. This is a quote from p.13 of the document … 

• These practices are also part of broader agro-ecological principles which are at the heart of the farm to fork and biodiversity strategies and their targets to bring back at least 10% of agricultural area under high-diversity landscape features, to reduce nutrient losses and risk and use of chemical pesticides, to increase the proportion of agricultural land under organic farming and to increase soil organic matter. There is evidence that soil carbon levels are likely to improve if organic farming is applied to agricultural production systems. Equally, agroforestry provides many benefits for soil health and climate adaptation. Other sustainable practices include cover cropping, crop rotation, the incorporation of crop residues, contour farming in slopes, avoid heavy machinery, the safe and compost, preventing conversion to arable land, conversion to grassland, continuous soil cover, reduced tillage and chemical inputs.

More detail is given in the Staff Working Document from which the following quotes are taken  … 

• Land use change and unsustainable soil management have caused, and are still causing, organic and mineral soils to lose carbon, and with it part of their fertility, their capacity to absorb and retain water and the other co-benefits. Loss of SOM is highly relevant for climate change. Restoring soils that have lost SOM can be done by applying sustainable soil management (SSM), in particular agroecology and agroforestry principles. (p21)

• The EU Carbon Farming Initiative “Technical Guidance Handbook – setting up and implementing result-based carbon farming mechanisms in the EU”, carried out from 2018 to 2020, explored key issues, challenges, trade-offs and design options to develop carbon farming. It reviewed existing schemes that reward climate-related benefits in five promising areas: peatland restoration and rewetting, agroforestry, maintaining and enhancing soil organic carbon (SOC) on mineral soils, managing SOC on grasslands, and livestock farm carbon audit. It also explored how a widespread adoption of carbon farming can be triggered in the EU.

• Agroforestry implementation in Montpellier resulted in a 40% productivity increase while improving soil, water quality and biodiversity (SOLMACC Project) (p34)

• NGOs and Environmental Organisations are quoted as saying … the new Soil Strategy should highlight that the climate and biodiversity crisis concur and have the same solutions: good agricultural practices that focus on preventive and restorative measures such as organic farming, agroforestry, regenerative farming or agroecology, mixed crop-livestock farming, precision farming, reduced pollution. (p55)

EURAF provides the following statement to aid in further consultations and discussions on the “dedicated legislative proposal on soil health”, aka the “Soil Health Law” which the Commission promises to publish by 2023, 

Agroforestry, as a sustainable land management practice, has been shown to have an important role in improving soil quality and health based on at least four decades of data gathered from the world over. A large body of papers (summarised in Dollinger and Jose 2018 Mayer et al 2022) reaffirms that agroforestry can improve the major measurable soil metrics that define soil health, and show that agroforestry has the ability to (1) enrich soil organic carbon better than monocropping systems, (2) improve soil nutrient availability and soil fertility due to the presence of trees in the system, and (3) enhance soil microbial dynamics, which would positively influence soil health. It is imperative that agroforestry, as part of a multifunctional land-use strategy, should receive increased attention in our policy discussion for the future of soil and soil health. 

The figure shows the influence of trees in agroforestry systems impact soil health over a greater area than just where their roots grow. (USDA National Agroforestry Center illustration). Papers and posters presented at the EURAF online conference (Nuoro 17-19 May 2021) provide further examples of these benefits, e.g. (add links to these):

• O1.1_10_326 Tree cover affects the soil C balance in the Mediterranean cork-oak based silvopastoral systems

• O1.1_23_244 Variation of soil organic matter in silvopastoral  systems established under Pinus sylvsetris L. with celtic pigs in  Galicia (Spain)

• O1.2_13_248 Study of residual effects of sewage sludge application  in a silvopastoral system on soil bacterial communities using a  high-throughput sequencing technology

• O1.3_5_99 The effects of tree species composition on soil-related biodiversity in shelterbelts

• O1.3_7_283 Tree rows change the soil biodiversity abundance and repartition within the first year of plantation at an experimental agroforestry site in Ramecourt (Northern France)

• O3.2_12_41 Integrating the dynamics of soil erosion under agroforestry systems in process based dynamic crop models:  challenges and the way forward

• O3.3_7_338 Does livestock grazing affect soil properties in an oak silvopastoral system? Results from a traditional system in Western Greece

• P1.1_12_247 Organic carbon in the soil of agroforestry systems, Atlantic forest remnant and other land use systems

• P1.2_1_1 The use of biochar in agroforestal soil management strengthens the retention of water and nutrients in the semiarid valleys of the Bolivian Andes

• P1.2_21_525 Let’s get comparable – a standardized soil sampling design for agroforestry systems in Germany

• P1.2_22_526 Crop yield, soil conditions and functional agrobiodiversity in temperate arable alley cropping fields throughout the first decade after tree establishment

• P1.2_8_179 The potential of economically successful innovative food and nonfood systems in limiting soil erosion by wind across EU regions

• P3.2_16_206 On-farm production of woodchip for use as a soil improver: practical implementation

• P3.2_18_313 Comparing production systems -including agroforestry type – in organic vegetable growing on the basis of soil properties, and climate

• P3.2_24_512 Agroecological approach in soil management to sustain apple organic orchards