CropLife International Partners With Others To Support Global Soil Health

October 24, 2021
Climate Change  Soil  Sustainability 

By Robert Hunter, Chief Operating Officer, CropLife International

As soil scientist and World Food Prize Laureate Dr. Rattan Lal has said, “There can be no food without healthy soil, and there can be no life without food.” Soil health is not only at the foundation of our food systems and critical for the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), but soils function as major carbon reservoirs and water regulators, which makes them one of the most valuable assets to address climate change.

In the lead-up to the UN Food System Summit in September, CropLife International helped guide the development of a private sector, value chain coalition to raise the visibility of the critical role that soil health plays in achieving the SDGs and addressing climate change. The private sector Call to Action ultimately endorsed the goals of the Coalition of Action 4 Soil Health, a multi-stakeholder effort that emerged from the various actions tracks and solution clusters of the Summit.

 

Through the amplification of the importance of soil health, our ambition is to work side-by-side with farmers to put soil squarely back at the center of the farm. There is much that the private sector can develop and drive, such as:

• Defining financial mechanisms and investment solutions that can support farmers in the adoption of better soil practices,
• Proposing actionable roadmaps to enhance regenerative agricultural practices,
• Empowering farmers and landowners, helping to design new business models that include compensation and rewarding schemes for ecosystem services,
• Supporting the development of voluntary and transparent carbon market and pricing mechanisms, including carbon credits as a tool and incentive to transition to sustainable agriculture and to provide extra income for farmers, and
• Adopting a full value-chain approach to soil protection.

As we look ahead to COP26, the UN Climate Conference in Glasgow, Scotland in November and COP15, the UN’s Biodiversity Conference in Kunming, China in 2022, we will continue to seek opportunities for CropLife International and our partners to enter conversations that connect the dots between soil health, climate, and biodiversity, and opportunities to build an understanding of the role that agricultural innovation can play in delivering sustainable food systems.