That figure is not from a campaign group. It is from the Environment Agency’s own report on the state of English soil, in which its then chair described soil carbon loss as an act of economic and environmental self-harm. The government set a target to reverse soil degradation by 2030, and a year later the regulator admitted it does not have the data to know whether it is happening.
“Soil carbon loss is an act of economic and environmental self-harm.”
Emma Howard Boyd, then Chair of the Environment Agency, foreword to The state of the environment: soil.1
Rothamsted Research’s soil health index, built on a national soil survey, classed 38 per cent of arable soils in England and Wales as degraded, against under 7 per cent of grassland and woodland soils.3
In 2018 the 25 Year Environment Plan committed the government to all of England’s soils being managed sustainably by 2030. The actions attached to it were updating guidance for farmers, research, and an investment of £200,000 in developing and testing soil health metrics.4
In the same 2019 report that documented the losses above, the Environment Agency stated plainly in its key findings that there is insufficient data on the health of our soils and that investment is needed in soil monitoring.1
Then in 2022 the Soil Health Action Plan for England, announced in the House of Lords as the plan to restore England’s soils, was shelved and folded into a broader Environmental Improvement Plan instead.5
Parliament noticed. The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee found UK soil heavily degraded through over-use, erosion, compaction and pollution, and called for statutory soil targets carrying the same legal weight as water and air quality.6
A 2030 target, four years away, with no dedicated national plan, no statutory target, and by the regulator’s own admission not enough data to say whether soil is getting better or worse.
Soil organic carbon is usually discussed as a climate ledger entry, and it is one. But on a working farm it is the physical thing that makes the soil function at all.
Organic matter is what binds mineral particles into crumbs, which is what creates the pore space that lets water in and roots down. It is what holds nutrients in forms a crop can reach rather than forms that wash away. The Environment Agency describes it acting like a sponge, holding up to twenty times its own weight in water and making soil more resistant to drought and erosion.1
So a soil that has lost half its carbon has not just lost a carbon store. It has lost the structure that holds nitrogen against leaching, the aggregate stability that keeps phosphate-bearing soil out of the river, and the infiltration that keeps rain on the land. Every other problem on this site runs back to it.
Soil carbon is not fixed. It is the running balance between what goes in as plant and root material and what is respired away, and management moves that balance in both directions. That is how it was lost, and it is the same mechanism by which it can be rebuilt.
Rebuilding it is slow, measured in years rather than seasons, and it is site specific. Anyone who claims a fast universal number for it should be treated with suspicion, and that includes us. What can be said with confidence is that the direction of travel is a management choice, and that England has spent four decades choosing one direction.
The Soil First Initiative works on the soil itself, using natural soil biology to build structure and organic matter so farmland holds rain and nutrients instead of shedding them. It is done field by field and catchment by catchment, the land stays in full production throughout, and the change is measured in the soil and in the water. See how it works, or read the full evidence file.
The cheapest soil test in the country, and what it is telling us.
Thirty-eight per cent of surveyed sites in south west England shed water they should be holding.
A law in 1991. An advice service in 2006. Statutory farming rules in 2018. In 2026, fourteen per cent.