“The multiple roles of soils often go unnoticed. Soils don’t have a voice, and few people speak out for them. They are our silent ally in food production [the] foundation of vegetation and agriculture. Forests need it to grow. We need it for food, feed, fiber, fuel and much more… We need healthy soils to achieve our food security and nutrition goals, to fight climate change and to ensure overall sustainable development… There are many ways to do this. Crop diversification which is used by most of the world’s family farmers is one of them…”

José Graziano da Silva, FAO Director-General

When the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations declared the International Year of Soils (IYS) in 2015, they took a position on the future of soil, water, the climate, the environment, farmers and global food security. An international campaign to attract resources and facilitate networking and awareness, the IYS 2015, resulted in a slew of informational materials and events, the inclusion of soil in the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals, a revision of the 31-year old World Soil Charter, a Global Soil Partnership and a massive report on the Status of the World’s Soil Resources.

The report concluded,

“[While] there is cause for optimism in some regions, the majority of the world’s soil resources are in only fair, poor or very poor condition. Today, 33 percent of [cultivated] land is moderately to highly degraded due to the erosion, salinization, compaction, acidification and chemical pollution of soils.”

The imperative of soil conservation and restoration is obvious: The world is losing about 75 billion tons of crop soil every year—a loss valued at US$400 billion.1 Soil erosion, degradation and desertification have reduced agricultural productivity by 50% in Africa and 20% in Asia. Not only soil is being affected—the global loss of soil-based ecosystem services is valued between US$6.3 and $10.6 trillion annually. The two billion poor rural dwellers farming on marginal, rain-fed land are the farmers most affected by these losses.2

The Status of the World’s Soil Resources lists drivers of soil degradation as population growth and urbanization, land markets and land grabs, war and civil strife, climate change, and farming practices like intensive tillage without adding enough organic matter. This accelerates soil erosion by causing a net loss of soil carbon as CO2 ,making soil susceptible to erosion, Nitrous oxide (N2O), emission resulting from excessive nitrogen fertilizer use is also a contributor to climate change. But the report also identifies agricultural land use intensity as a primary driver, resulting from growing food, fiber and fuel demands, an increase in global meat consumption, and the spread of agrofuels. On one hand, the FAO assumes these global trends are inevitable. On the other, the report suggests that the current model of food production is unsustainable. To resolve the contradiction between unsustainable production and the need to restore soil fertility and ecosystem services, the IYS proposes systems of “sustainable soil management.”

The IYS is a crucially important initiative. But to change things on the ground they need to ask: What’s driving the drivers of soil degradation? If the solution is sustainable soil management—hardly a new concept—why haven’t farmers been doing it? The answer to this puzzle goes back to the origins of industrial agriculture.