SDG 15 — Life on Land: Preserving soil health for a better food future
by Oluwatosin Ogunsola, Global Landscape Forum Ambassador
Life starts from land and ends on land. Land is an essential resource which serves a number of purposes, including domestic, industrial, and commercial uses. Globally, the pressure on land for basic life needs of shelter, food and water has been unprecedented with population explosion and changing climate resulting in a huge magnitude of vulnerabilities. The Special Envoy of the UN Secretary General for the 2021 Food Systems Summit, Dr. Agnes Kalibata, stressed at the pre-summit (watch video here) that “Climate change is the number one threat that farmers face”.
Over 70% of the food produced globally is directly influenced by pollination and many pollination agents are affected by weather variabilities thus adversely impacting food production. To put this into perspective, consider a situation where there is an increase or decrease in temperature by 1°C beyond the usual range normally experienced. One can witness obvious changes in temperature, relative humidity and on the vegetation. What we often miss noticing is the shift in the activities of all living organisms (both fauna and flora) in response to this temperature change. A prolonged exposure will push some organisms to death, some can become mutated (resistant) while others may adopt adaptive mechanisms (tolerant) to survive. In any case, the effect is often passed to the next generation (usually in the form of morphological changes).
A potent precursor in building resiliency to push back on such deleterious effects while providing the basic needs in an ethical manner is through agro-ecological intensification. This embeds climate friendly / resilient practices in the production of food while ensuring biodiversity conservation and protecting soil health. Much of these are evident through the deployment of nature-based solutions, integrated farming, growing of trees as well as landscape restoration of degraded lands with keen attention to appropriate land use / land cover system. Simulating practices to mirror those obtained in the wild becomes imperative to gravitate production processes from the current unsustainable approach towards a more productive and resilient approach hence attaining the reintroduction of ecosystem services in regulating biotic and abiotic influences on the environment.
Soil creates a leeway for ecosystem services to be effectively deployed hence the need to enhance soil health for better functionality. Aside the role of soil in carbon sequestration, management and conservation of soil is essential in promoting microbial activities which are fundamental in nutrient cycling for plant growth and development, aeration and moisture retention in organic residues to reduce the effect of evapo-transpiration, and proliferation of diverse macro and microorganisms to promote biodiversity. The interrelationships between soil-microbial-plant continuum expressed the critical inputs soil health has on food production and by extension, food systems. A healthy soil is living and contains a diverse community of organisms which play strategic roles in enhancing productivity. This message was profoundly captured by the 2020 recipient of the World Food Prize, Professor Rattan Lal, who proposed the mantra stating that, “We should never forget that healthy soil equals healthy food, equals healthy people, equals healthy ecosystems, and equals a healthy planet”.
The current status of locust invasion in East Africa, drought in North America and flooding in Europe and Asia are symbolic of extreme weather variabilities at their breaking point. It is highly imperative to mainstream agro-ecological practices in stemming the tide and enhancing resiliency in a bid to forestall a prolonged exposure which is largely inimical to the state of health of soils for sustainable food production. Some of the sustainable approaches engaged by youth are climate-smart agriculture, soilless farming, locally-led adaptation strategies and ecosystem based adaptation for food security assembly’s framework. The youth at the UNFSS Pre-Summit in Rome, committed to food system transformation and called on governments, businesses, and other partners to intensify action on the ground.
To this end, youth participation in policies and implementation of strategies to secure transformational change within the food system is essential to create the needed shift for a robust framework in building resiliency across the food chain. I join other youth voices globally to call on everyone to #Act4Food, #Act4Change and sign this Youth Pledge.
The views and opinions expressed in this blog are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the United Nations Food Systems Summit.
