⁕ Concern about the UK’s low soil organic matter levels was raised much longer ago than the 25 years Antony Carter (Letters, 20 May) suggests.
The 1970 report, Modern Farming and the Soil, from the Agricultural Advisory Council (widely known as the Strutt Report), noted that “practices to maintain the organic matter level in the soil, such as applications of farmyard manure, other bulky organics, green manuring and the growing of grass and clover leys, have declined and disappeared from large sections of farming”.
Andrew Blake Marlborough, Wiltshire