Organic farming leaders have said soil erosion is the largest threat facing food production and warned that the UK government must act to ensure soils are protected, after having repeatedly blocked key European legislation. Monty Don, TV gardener and president of the Soil Association, has said soil erosion is "The biggest potential disaster" facing humans.

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Don was speaking about the threat to soil on Radio 4's 'Shared Planet' on Tuesday. Worldwide, human activity is threatening soils, the importance of which is only just being appreciated by scientists. As healthy soils take hundreds of years to form and are incredibly difficult and costly to restore, they are viewed as a non-renewable resource.

The Soil Association president examined the latest scientific findings on UK soils reflected on what the decline in soil health could mean on the show.

Speaking at the Soil Association's annual conference last week, he said, "The biggest potential disaster that is facing us all is the degradation of our soil. That should be at the core of our thinking. If we are to feed the world, we must have good soil. As a soil scientist said to me only last week, we have reached 'peak soil' and we can't produce any more."

He continued, "40% of the land mass of this earth Is now being cultivated, and because our soil is being used up – we're losing it at… about 50 times the rate that it's reproducing - the companies and corporations are buying more land. We are trying to consume our way out of over consumption. It's a disaster."

Earlier this month, sustainable farming groups and soil scientists reacted strongly to the European Commission's announcement that it would revisit, and potentially scrap, several stalled pieces of environmental legislation, including the Soils Directive.

The Soil Framework Directive has been stalled in draft form for over five years. If passed, it would introduce cohesive legal protection for soils, officially recognising them as a non-renewable resource, and bringing legislation into line with frameworks governing other non-renewable resources such as coal. The areas identified to be at highest risk from soil biodiversity loss in EU studies have largely coincided with the Member States blocking more effective soil protection.

Although the NFU in the UK said it does "not believe that there is a need for additional legislation in this area [because] Soils in the UK, and across the EU, are already protected by a range of laws and regulations, " a report released last month and co-authored by the EU Commission's in-house scientific advisory service, the Joint Research Centre, revealed that soil biodiversity is under threat in 56 percent of EU territory. The JRC report held up "intense land exploitation estimated as the main pressure on soil biodiversity."

Soil Association Policy Director Peter Melchett added on Tuesday, "Following the EU decision to drop their proposed European legislation to protect soils, partly at the insistence of the UK government, the Soil Association is calling on Owen Paterson to say what he will do to stop the extraordinarily high rate of loss of UK soils on which all of our food production depends.

The latest major UK soil study, conducted in 2009, found that food production is being jeopardised by the loss of two million tonnes of topsoil each year. Melchett said, "The health of our soil is too important to leave to chance. The EU directive that the UK government has blocked would have led to co-ordinated action to protect and improve soils across the EU. Now it is up to the UK government to take action."