Nearly Half of the Farmland in Europe Faces Erosion Factors

The cumu­la­tive impact of tillage, har­vest­ing oper­a­tions and water and wind ero­sion have been eval­u­ated for the first time at a European scale to deter­mine the con­se­quences of these fac­tors on arable land.

A new report pub­lished in Nature Sustainability shows that almost half of European farm­land face at least one dri­ver of soil ero­sion.

According to the European Union Joint Research Center (JRC), which authored the study, there are about 100 mil­lion hectares of arable land in the E.U.

“Our esti­mates show that 43 mil­lion hectares are vul­ner­a­ble to a sin­gle dri­ver of ero­sion, 15.6 mil­lion hectares to two dri­vers and 0.81 mil­lion hectares to three or more dri­vers,” the researchers wrote. ​“About 3.2 mil­lion hectares of arable land are vul­ner­a­ble to the pos­si­ble inter­ac­tion of increased flood, drought, water and wind ero­sion.”

The study also found that soil dis­place­ment by water is the most sig­nif­i­cant form of ero­sion, rep­re­sent­ing 51 per­cent of the total dis­place­ment and involv­ing 57 per­cent of the total area.

“Soil dis­place­ment due to water ero­sion in the E.U. is esti­mated to be equal to a 1‑centimeter dis­place­ment of soil annu­ally from an area twice the size of Belgium,” the researchers wrote.

The research also iden­ti­fied tillage as the sec­ond-largest dri­ver of soil dis­place­ment, account­ing for 36 per­cent of the whole. Wind ero­sion and crop har­vest­ing came in right after, with 10 and 2.7 per­cent, respec­tively.

Understanding and assess­ing soil ero­sion is cru­cial to the future of food pro­duc­tion and the envi­ron­ment, as the soil is the foun­da­tion of agri­cul­ture and ecosys­tems.

According to the JRC, changes in soil qual­ity ​“affect the pro­vi­sion of food, water sup­ply and reg­u­la­tion, and car­bon seques­tra­tion. Good soil is a major micro­bial gene pool from which we extract bio­med­ical resources; lower soil qual­ity puts this process in ques­tion.”

Soil ero­sion results in the loss of agri­cul­tural pro­duc­tiv­ity, reduces soil sta­bil­ity, changes soil struc­ture and reduces soil biol­ogy capac­ity and water reten­tion.

Erosion also results in the loss of soil nutri­ents and impairs ​“all major func­tions of soil, not only its pro­duc­tiv­ity,” the researchers noted.

The JRC researchers said the study con­sti­tutes a set of pre­dic­tions that should serve as the basis for devel­op­ing ​“an effi­cient strat­i­fied mon­i­tor­ing net­work and inform­ing tar­geted mit­i­ga­tion strate­gies under the Common Agricultural Policy 2023 – 2027.”

The Common Agricultural Policy is an E.U. sub­sidy pro­gram designed to ​“sup­port farm­ers and improve agri­cul­tural pro­duc­tiv­ity.”

To coun­ter­act soil ero­sion, the researchers rec­om­mended reduc­ing tillage inten­sity and increas­ing veg­e­ta­tive cover on arable land. ​“These actions are ben­e­fi­cial to the func­tional agro-bio­di­ver­sity of the farm­ing sys­tem,” they wrote.

Following these rec­om­men­da­tions and other good farm­ing prac­tices might reduce tillage ero­sion by 27 per­cent, water ero­sion by 20 per­cent and wind ero­sion by 9 per­cent.

The researchers said soil assess­ment and con­ser­va­tion mea­sures would become increas­ingly impor­tant due to cli­mate change.

The JRC said the cur­rent soil ero­sion assess­ment is the first of its kind and is con­sid­ered a basis for devel­op­ing a com­pre­hen­sive mon­i­tor­ing sys­tem of soil health on the con­ti­nent.

“Europe is mov­ing toward a more vig­or­ous hydro­log­i­cal cycle which will exac­er­bate the ero­sion impact… future geog­ra­phy and rates of ero­sion may be sub­stan­tially altered by cli­mate change,” they wrote.

“The road to the sus­tain­able, car­bon-neu­tral and bio­di­ver­sity-friendly sys­tem of agri­cul­ture advo­cated for in the E.U. Green Deal goes through a the­matic strat­egy for soil pro­tec­tion from mul­ti­ple con­cur­rent ero­sion processes,” the researchers added.

The JRC said there are cur­rently only a hand­ful of soil ero­sion sur­vey pro­grams world­wide, notably the United States National Cooperative sur­vey and the Chinese National General Survey Program on Soil and Water Conservation.

The new research will be part of the ​“E.U. soil strat­egy for 2030” enacted last year to cope with land degra­da­tion.

• European Union Joint Research Center