60% Of EU Farmland Degraded, 40% In UK; Breakdown Driven At Least In Part By Extreme Weather, Warming
More than 60% of the EU’s agricultural soils are degraded due to intensive agriculture, with similar damage to about 40% of British soils, a report has found. Experts from the Save Soil initiative said nourishing and restoring agricultural soils could reduce the impact of the climate crisis and provide protection against the worsening extremes of weather, as well as the food shortages and price rises likely to accompany them.
This degradation of soil is changing the land’s water cycle and exacerbating the impact of the climate crisis in a vicious circle. Impoverished soils, lacking their natural structure, are incapable of holding water in any quantity, so that when it rains, the water tends to run off them, worsening flooding; but in times of drought, when healthy soils would act as a sponge, poor soils have little resilience.
Save Soil, which advocates regenerative farming practices, called for soil restoration to be made a key priority of climate programmes, and for changes in agricultural policies and subsidies to reward it. “Europe and the UK are experiencing extremes – parched fields one month, flooded towns the next. What this report makes clear is that our soils are no longer buffering us,” said a spokesperson for the group. “We are losing the natural infrastructure that manages water.”
In 2022, a third of the EU population and 40% of the bloc’s land were affected by water scarcity, while Spain, Italy and Germany have also seen disastrous floods in 2023-2024, the report noted. Groundwater levels have dropped by a third in France, and the UK is likely to see drought this year despite record rain last year. Nearly half of the global urban population, about 2.4 billion people, will face water scarcity by 2050, according to the UN. Price rises of some commodities affected by the climate crisis, including coffee and chocolate, are already being seen by consumers.
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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/may/09/more-than-a-third-of-uk-agricultural-soil-degraded-by-intensive-farming-report