A full 90 per cent of the Earth’s precious topsoil is likely to be at risk by 2050, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, FAO.

In a bid to protect soil globally and help farmers, the FAO warned on Wednesday that the equivalent of one soccer pitch of earth erodes, every five seconds.

It also takes around a thousand years to create just a few centimetres of topsoil and to help land restoration. Now, the UN agency is calling for more action by countries and partners who’ve signed up to the Global Soil Partnership (GSP) over the last decade.

Did you know that the equivalent of one soccer pitch of soil erodes every five seconds? Yet it takes 1 000 years to produce just a few centimetres of topsoil.

Soil is the life support of our food and agriculture. We rely on soils for 95 percent of the food we consume. Yet on this course, by 2050, 90 percent of all soils are set to be degraded. Without change, degrading soils will put our ecosystems, our climate and food security in jeopardy.

FAO’s Global Soil Partnership (GSP) has been working for the past decade with countries and over 500 partners to address soil-related issues, positioning soil on the Global Agenda. The GSP continues to create an ever-growing network of partners to promote sustainable soil management and soil governance globally.

Here are just five of the achievements of FAO’s GSP in stopping soil degradation and improving soil management:

1. Working with countries to recarbonize soils

The GSP partners with countries to reach farmers and improve soil management on the ground.

One programme, Recarbonization of Global Agricultural Soils (RECSOIL), addresses challenges related to climate change and sustainability by boosting soil health and making them more productive and shock resilient. The mechanism focuses on the recarbonization of soils, or improving the amount of organic matter in soil, by adopting practices such as using cover crops, crop rotation and agroforestry, among others. This boosts the health of soils and in turn, increases food security and farmers’ incomes. The RECSOIL programme addresses both carbon sequestration and mitigation of greenhouse gases (GHG).

Costa Rica and Mexico are currently piloting RECSOIL by incentivizing farmers to adopt sustainable soil management. Farmers are trained on good practices while their fields are monitored to assess soil health and the provision of ecosystem services.

The Global Symposium on Soils for Nutrition - “Soils, where food begins,” will be held in a virtual format from 26 to 29 July 2022. The Symposium will bring science and policy together to review the status and challenges of soil fertility in relation with crop, animal and human nutrition. Humans, like plants, and animals, need sufficient food to survive. But food must be safe and nutritious not only to provide energy and basic nutrients, but also to prevent disease and the intake of harmful toxins. About 95 percent of our food comes from soils, which have a natural capacity to support plant growth by providing them with nutrients through the soil solution.