ForumforAg Food Systems Podcast Summary

In this video episode, to mark World Soil Day, we talk with Kathryn Bartlett, a soil scientist at Anglo-American, who is working on unpicking the interactions between polyhalite and soils. She explains the importance of building up this understanding of interactions to unlock new and innovative crop nutrient solutions as part of a global need to improve soil health/ performance that enhances crop nutrient use efficiency and land management practices. 

Here is a summary of the conversation.

Why is Anglo-American so interested in soils, and what can we do to restore degraded soil?

Every large multinational company and government is discovering that they need to have an interest in soils if they want to meet their sustainability targets.

Soils underpin life on Earth. They contain 75% of the carbon pool on land and a vast variety and volume of biodiversity. Soils cross borders, as do the environmental impacts of poor management. Restoration means thinking across borders and working together with a single driver for policy. Soil actions shouldn’t be driven by one set of decision-making criteria, like yield value. The driver has to be simply the health of our soils.

Tell us about polyhalite, your breakthrough innovation that potentially can help to find a more balanced and sustainable use of fertilizer.

We have constructed a mine in the North York Moors National Park in the UK to extract polyhalite, a mineral which is a natural fertilizer. Polyhalite degrades in a gentler manner than artificial fertilizers. It takes time to build into the soil, but it releases its nutrients in a way that is more aligned with a plant’s life cycle and is more digestible for the plant.

Polyhalite can make a global impact, because the mine has lifespan of more than 50 years, with 13 million tonnes of product output every year. The mine is environmentally much more sustainable than previous mines We tried to reimagine mining to improve people’s lives, and it meets all the criterial to be sited in a national park. It’s an approach to how we transition to green infrastructure.

What do you need to bring polyhalite to market and reach scale?

We need to have systems in place that recognise where products like polyhalite sit in the wider context of the transition. This is one nutrient product and there will be many others. We also need to educate our audience on where it fits in and how to use it best. It is not a silver bullet – it’s part of the bigger story.

One of the biggest issues is that we are reliant on the business aspects of the transition. Currently, our systems only pay the farmers for one element – yield –  are we’re not thinking about soils in the broadest scope. We expect that farmers will look after soil, but we need to think about the time scale and how we implement systems change.

Are we being held back in tackling soil degradation because price reflects yield, not necessarily the  public good that farmers contribute by managing soils over the long term?

We lack financial incentives to maintain wider ecosystem services and keep soils healthy for the community. Soils are underrepresented in wider environmental policies, although we’ve had water and air policies for a number of years across Europe.

The Green Deal is starting to move towards more significant soil policy, and that’s a step change. We know soil is a difficult topic, because of the cross-border elements and also because there can be a mismatch between data from different countries. How do you pull all of that together to make sense at scale?

We’re recording this on World Soil Day. What does the day mean for you, and what’s  your key message to the people working on soil around the world?

I was the executive officer of the British Society of Soil Science when World Soil Day was accepted into the calendar, so it resonates with me personally.

World Soil Day is a reminder of how fundamental soil is. It’s not just a natural resource, it’s the foundation of everything we do. It’s a day to reflect on how critical soil is to life, from the cotton sheets on our beds to the food we eat for breakfast.

It’s a day to celebrate thinking about soil and I’m inspired by people coming together and having the conversations.

If you have found this short summary interesting, there’s lots more to hear in the full 30-minute conversation. It is available now on iTunes, Podbean or Spotify or on this website.