IFDC has joined the Coalition of Action for Soil Health (CA4SH). This United Nations Food Systems Summit (UNFSS) Solution Cluster convenes “a multi-stakeholder coalition to facilitate the adoption and scaling of restoration practices that improve soil health in productive landscapes through investment and policy action.” Coalition members champion investment in global soil health.
The coalition regards soil as a “unifier across the complex and inter-related global challenges of food and nutrition security, climate change, and biodiversity loss.” Good soil health is both a public good and a capital asset for farmers, their communities, and their nations.
Soil is the foundation of global food systems. Beyond producing 95% of the world’s foods, it also functions as a major carbon and water regulator. Although soil offers a solution to mitigating the effects of climate change, it suffers from increasingly regular, harmful climatic events, such as drought and flooding. According to CA4SH, more than 40% of our earth’s surface is degraded; valuable topsoil is lost at a rate of 75 billion tons annually. Combined with continual mining of soil nutrients, this results in an economic agricultural loss of $400 billion per annum, which adversely impacts around 3.2 billion people.
To secure sustainable food systems, especially in light of the 56% food gap that will be experienced in 2050, public and private sector investments in soil health are critical. Soil health can no longer be perceived as an asset without climatic, social, and financial impacts. Therefore, the coalition aims to catalyze and synergize global commitments to and investments in soil health and its caretakers, namely smallholder farmers, by UN Member States, the private sector, civil society and research organizations, and multilateral organizations and foundations.
When seeking solutions to achieve the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, the world must realize: the answer lies beneath our feet.
***
The following organizations have joined forces with the multi-stakeholder coalition: BASF, Bayer, CF Industries, Corteva, Nestle, Nutrien, OCP, PepsiCo, Rabobank, Syngenta, Yara, CropLife International, International Fertilizer Association, and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development.
