2019 was the year that nature and land use made it to the top of the global agenda. It became clear that we will not meet the Paris Agreement if we don’t solve broken food and land-use systems. Land degradation is affecting 3.2 billion people, and for far too long this has gone under the radar. This must change in 2020. If not, we risk that all the world’s topsoil be eroded in the next 60 years.
Healthy soil is a resource of incredible magnitude. It captures and stores water and carbon, increases biodiversity, and it preserves and increases food security.
The only way we can improve soil health is by really understanding human impact on nature and working with the farmer.
In November, I met Govind Agrawal and his wife Anju in Khandoli village in the Agra district of India. They have a four-hectare plot, growing potatoes. With the right crop nutrition programme, they have increased their yield by 15%. They combined knowledge and products into solutions. Precision and balanced nutrition with the right forms of nutrients, coupled with actively managing soil organic matter, and related practices such as cover cropping, implementation of soil conservation structures, reduced/no-tillage, etc. are key to conserving or improving soil health.

This is only one example of an individual farmer cultivating his land to improve the produce, livelihood, soil quality and carbon footprint. It may seem small, but if you multiply this by tens of millions of farmers, we’re talking incremental changes with world-changing impact.