A total of 3,100 farmers with 80,000 fields, are understood to have applied for the free soil test service being offered this winter, administered by the Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute (AFBI).

It is understood that the majority of these applications are for the “open scheme”, potentially available to all livestock farmers in NI. Work continues to recruit farmers on to a separate scheme, targeted at farmers in the Upper Bann river catchment (the “catchment scheme”).

The free soil test service is being funded under the £4.1m EU exceptional adjustment aid package announced in July 2016. Other initiatives funded under this package include the money to incentivise farmers to remove calves persistently infected with BVD.

At the outset, the plan for the free soil-testing service was to include 10,000 fields in each of the two schemes. That means only one in eight farmers who applied to the “open scheme” over the past month will be successful (chosen at random).

This is a significant missed opportunity. Surely every effort should be made to find an additional source of money to fund soil testing across all 3,100 farms, while broadening the offer to arable and vegetable growers who were excluded initially. Having the results from soil tests on over 80,000 fields would provide an excellent baseline for the industry to move forward, while establishing a robust data set highlighting realities on the ground.

We are often told that there is a problem with phosphorus being applied in excess. That might be the case on a small number of intensive farms, but many farms are run extensively, and the real problem is a lack of nutrients. Comprehensive data would help to highlight these issues more clearly and perhaps encourage more environmentally sustainable solutions.

It is the soil that provides the building blocks for our agri-food industry, not machinery, equipment, concrete or steel.