Six weeks before the floods arrived, a scientific journal called Soil Use and Management published a paper warning that disaster was brewing(5). Surface water run-off in south-western England, where the Somerset Levels are situated, was reaching a critical point. Thanks to a wholesale change in the way the land is cultivated, at 38% of the sites the researchers investigated, the water – instead of percolating into the ground – is now pouring off the fields.
Farmers have been ploughing land that was previously untilled and switching from spring to winter sowing, leaving the soil bare during the rainy season. Worst of all is the shift towards growing maize, whose cultivated area in this country has risen from 1,400 hectares to 160,000 since 1970(6). In three quarters of the maize fields in the south west, the soil structure has broken down to the extent that they now contribute to flooding. In many of these fields, soil, fertilisers and pesticides are sloshing away with the water. And nothing of substance, the paper warned, is being done to stop it(7). Dated: December 2013.
Maize is being grown in Britain not to feed people, but to feed livestock and, increasingly, the biofuel business(8). This false solution to climate change will make the impacts of climate change much worse, by reducing the land’s capacity to hold water.
The previous government also saw it coming. In 2005 it published a devastating catalogue of the impacts of these changes in land use(9). As well as the loss of fertility from the land and the poisoning of watercourses, it warned, “increased run-off and sediment deposition can also increase flood hazard in rivers.” Maize, it warned, is a particular problem because the soil stays bare before and after the crop is harvested, without the stubble or weeds required to bind it. “Wherever possible,” it urged, “avoid growing forage maize on high and very high erosion risk areas.”
The Labour government turned this advice into conditions attached to farm subsidies(10). Ground cover crops should be sown under the maize and the land should be ploughed, then resown with winter cover plants within ten days of harvesting, to prevent water from sheeting off. So why isn’t this happening in Somerset?
Because the current government dropped the conditions. Sorry, not just dropped them. It issued – wait for it – a specific exemption for maize cultivation from all soil conservation measures(11). It’s hard to get your head round this. The crop which causes most floods and does most damage to soils is the only one which is completely unregulated.