World Soil Day 2024 | Caring for Soils: Measure, Monitor, Manage

World Soil Day is held annually on the 5th of December as a means to focus attention on the importance of healthy soil and to advocate for the sustainable management of soil resources. This year’s theme is ‘Caring for Soils: Measure, Monitor, Manage’ which underscores the importance of accurate soil data and information in understanding soil characteristics and supporting informed decision making on sustainable soil management for food security.

Protecting soil health and effectively managing the agricultural land that soils support is central to global food security. In the UK, one of the most valuable tools we have for understanding and protecting both soils and food security are the Agricultural Land Classification system, which covers England, Wales and Northern Ireland and the Land Classification for Agriculture system in Scotland. These classification systems provide a standardised approach to identifying the soils and land that contribute the most to putting food on the table.

We need land to build more homes in the UK and we also need land to support other important public needs such as green energy production. The Agricultural Land Classification and Land Classification for Agriculture systems allow us to understand and set priorities in the planning process to ensure that we protect the most valuable soils that are needed to grow the food for the future.

At the heart of these systems is the need for detailed and accurate soil data and collecting this requires expert soil knowledge and a lot digging! At Wardell Armstrong, we have a dedicated team of soil and peat scientists that specialise in conducting Agricultural Land Classification and Land Classification for Agriculture surveys to support the land planning and development sectors. We also use the soil data to identify ways of protecting and improving soil quality.

We spend our days digging holes and recording key soil quality and function indicators such as soil texture, soil structure and importantly soil colour! These along with other factors such as climate information are brought together into the Agricultural Land Classification or Land Classification for Agriculture systems to give a simple land grade or class that can be used to understand how important the land and soil is for food production. This is used to help use make informed decisions about how we manage are precious land and soil resources.

Wardell Armstrong’s team of qualified and highly experienced soil scientists provide soils and land management related expertise across a diverse range of business sectors including, but not limited to land management, utilities, built development (commercial and residential), renewable energy, minerals and waste.