BRITAIN has long been in need of a strategy to protect and enhance its soil.
Five years ago the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution outlined the sort
of things that should be covered in a report Sustainable Use of Soil.
In the meantime, the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF) and the
Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions (DETR) have
quietly—it seems almost secretly—planned the policies and the
programmes to implement them.
Until recently, whenever I met soil scientists they would quiz me on when the
government would publish its soil policy. Now Michael Meacher,…
