The suggestion that poor soil management has meant the world only has 60 harvests left has no basis in scientific fact, a researcher from the University of Oxford has found.

The claim is often used by environmental campaigners when criticising modern agricultural practices.

It gained considerable traction in 2017 when Michael Gove, the UK’s Environment Secretary at the time, suggested that the UK is 30-40 years away from “the fundamental eradication of soil fertility”.

However, Dr Hannah Ritchie said that referring to a single lifespan for all soils within a country or across the world is “inaccurate and nonsensical”.

Writing in the science website Our World in Data, Ritchie said that after extensive research she could not trace the origin of the claims.

She found that the most comprehensive study into the condition of the world’s soils was conducted by researchers at Cranfield University. It involved a comparison of 4,285 soil erosion rates from 38 different countries.

The study highlighted that over 90% of conventionally managed soils had a lifespan greater than 60 years, over half the soils were projected to last more than 1,000 years, and 18% would exceed 10,000 years.

Ritchie points out that many soils are not eroding at all and 7% of samples in the study were becoming deeper over time. Also, wider use of practices such as cover-cropping and minimum tillage will help slow down and reverse soil erosion in many areas.

“There is no single figure for how many harvests the world has left because there is so much variation in the types, quality, and management of our soils. It’s just implausible that they would all be degrading at exactly the same rate.”