Peter Melchett

UK Soil Association policy director Peter Melchett has responded with criticism to the government’s Low Carbon Transition Plan, which was published last week.

“It is good to see farming included in the first formal plan for tackling greenhouse emissions,” he said. “But the emission reductions planned for farming are incredibly modest, reflecting the Government’s complete lack of a long-term strategy for climate friendly farming.”

Lord Melchett said he feared the plan to cut farming emissions by a paltry 6 per cent by 2020 could mean the farming industry would have to make enormous cuts of over 70 per cent between 2020 and 2050.

The Government conceded that farming, land use and waste would contribute a mere 4 per cent of the emission savings that it hoped to make by 2020.

It also stated that its Transition Plan would “help protect the equivalent of over 37bn tonnes of carbon dioxide that is currently locked into natural reservoirs of carbon in our soils and forests”.

However, Lord Melchett responded: “The fact is there is nothing new in the plan which will do anything to reduce losses of carbon from our agricultural soils. The Government are certainly understating the case when they say that, for farming, they do not yet ‘have all the answers’.”