Scientists urge action on the nation’s ‘fragile’ soil

Leading soil scientists have called on the government to protect the ‘golden soil’ underneath an agricultural industry worth $78bn a year.

Former governor-general, the late major general Michael Jeffery among towering eucalypts at Canberra's Botanic Gardens in 2019. Picture: Ray Strange

Leading soil scientists have called on the federal government to protect what they say is the nation’s most important natural resource – the “golden soil” underneath an agricultural industry worth $78bn a year and ecosystem services valued at $930bn.

Their push to reinstate the role of the National Soils Advocate – a position held in the past by the former governor-general, the late major general Michael Jeffery – comes as the government responds to an Auditor-General’s report into its soil strategy.

The advocate role was dumped last August in favour of a more “integrated” approach based on the government’s 2021 National Soil Strategy, which sets out a 20-year vision on managing soil as a national asset, and a more ­detailed five-year National Soil Action Plan.

In May this year, the Auditor-General said that despite $270m allocated in the past three years, there were no effective arrangements in place to support the implementation of the strategy and plan, and no framework or process to assess the impact of individual initiatives.

“The department’s design and early implementation of the strategy and the national action plan was not effective, except for its stakeholder engagement activities,” the report said. “The design processes to support the achievement of the government’s objectives were partly appropriate.

“There was limited evidence used to inform the development of the strategy and the national action plan. The national action plan does not specify which of its priority actions relate to which goals or objectives in the strategy.”

The Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, which along with state authorities, manages the strategy and plan, has accepted many recommendations in the report, designed to improve imple­men­tation.

The report revealed poor departmental processes that saw a 17-month delay in the release last November of the action plan, designed to “integrate soils within the broader context of sustainable land management, sustainable agriculture and responding to climate change”.

The soil scientists behind the push to reinstate the advocate role are from the Tasmanian branch of Soil Science Australia; they support the strategy and plan but say dumping the advocate has left Australia “without a clear voice and prominent plan for our nat­ion’s soil health”.

They say the dumping has “essentially failed” the first goal of the strategy, which confirmed support for the role.

In a letter to then agriculture minister Murray Watt in May, they say Australia’s soil is “deeply weathered, often fragile and easily degraded” but is critical, not just for food production but for clean air, bricks, biodiversity, carbon storage, climate stability, plant water supply, and much more.

The advocate role was set up by the Gillard government in 2012 with the appointment of Jeffery, who had lobbied for its establishment for some years. After his death in 2020, former Queensland governor and senior diplomat Penny Wensley was appointed to the job.

She was acknowledged by the government as playing “a crucial role in bringing parties together to commit to a shared direction for soil” through the national strategy. The soil scientists also praised her work, saying she built momentum for the strategy across the nation.

A key signatory to the May letter, Richard Doyle, from the University of Tasmania, said clear leadership was needed to protect the nation’s soil, and an advocate would build understanding of what had to be done to maintain the important resource’s health.