SOIL SECRETS

“How can I stand on the ground every day and not feel its power? How can I live my life stepping on this stuff and not wonder at it?” (Jungle Project)

Noemi Salantiu recently discovered that the vegan shoes that she wears are not as sustainable as advertised. Eco-friendly shoes are becoming more and more popular, and are generally made from recycled polyesters or rubbers, and natural materials such as cotton fibers, hemp or sugarcane. Sometimes, the natural materials that make up the shoes are crops from intensive agriculture: the industrial, monoculture focused, pesticide rich kind of agriculture. Noemi is wondering:

"If these crops are used to make shoes, rather than to make food or biofuel, arguably more pressing world needs, they simply must come from sustainable agriculture. Otherwise, how much better are “ecological” shoes than regular shoes made from fossil fuel based extraction and manufacturing?" Humans’ ability to walk on earth depends on what the soil gives us.

Sometimes it is good to walk out of the city and into the sugarcane fields to investigate where your shoes come from. Image generated with Canva AI.

Soil Secrets focuses on the importance of soil in all areas of life, the cost of depleting it and the opportunities to steward this resource no matter the business that we are in. We require healthy soil for making food, fiber, and fuel. Soil is at the origin of the food we eat, the clothes and shoes we wear, how we build our cities and how rural areas sustain peoples’ livelihoods. Even our name reminds us of our earthy origins, as the word ‘human’ derives from the Latin word ‘humus,’ meaning of the Earth or ground.

Beneath our feet lies a world teeming with life, yet often overlooked and underestimated. Soil is home to more than half of all life on Earth. Today, we know that a teaspoon of soil hosts more living microorganisms than there are people in the world. Soil is not just dirt: it is composed of minerals, organic materials, complex root systems, and a community of microorganisms. The greater the diversity we nurture into it, the healthier the soil becomes. The healthier the soil, the healthier our foods and our physical resilience. Research on the benefits of microorganisms present in the soil for physical and mental health is piling up, making it essential for humans to preserve this resource at all cost.

At present, we are at a collective, critical juncture for soil. Globally, 40% of land has been degraded and 70% has been disrupted by human activity, especially to make room for agriculture. The environmental footprint of agriculture and food production is enormous: 26% of all greenhouse gas emissions. News of Earth’s desertification, its disastrous effects on biodiversity loss and climate risks reach us regularly. Understanding that massive arid land threatens our ability to ensure food, water, housing and economic opportunities for everyone prompted 196 countries to sign the UN Convention to Combat Land Desertification (since 1994). One of their flagship projects is working with the African Union to build the Great Green Wall of 8,000 km of vegetation traversing 11 African countries. Restoring degraded land replenishes soil and water, which can generate new economic activities and enable local populations to stay on their native soil, to live productively and with dignity. Besides being a source of key resources for humans, soil is instrumental in tackling the climate crisis. It stores more organic carbon than the biosphere and atmosphere combined and it continues to absorb carbon dioxide (CO2) from human activities, acting as a carbon sink. Land sinks store approx. a quarter or all yearly emissions. In the same way that soil can slow down effects of climate change, the changes in land use and the continuous conversion of natural land to farmland can do the opposite and accelerate climate change. As we will see further down, agriculture in particular is a unique industry and key lever. It can help reduce emissions and free up soil to achieve its potential as a carbon sink!

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 15 has as one of its targets to restore degraded land and soil, and achieve a land degradation-neutral world by 2030. Stewarded by FAO, its mission statement is "Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss". However, the UN, like humanity, is running out of time.

If you are someone who cares about where our food, fiber, fuel come from; you are passionate about biodiversity; or you wish to establish a sustainable value chain in your company, then Soil Secrets is the place to start from.

To better understand what can make sustainable change in accord with the 4Revs value framework, we will rely on dozens of 4Revs cases and other examples to showcase sustainable soil and land innovation. We are going to focus on answering the following:

• How can we move away from the extractive use of land and towards more sustainable approaches?

• Which are the key opportunities that companies can take to contribute to regeneration?

Regeneration is to be understood as replenishing soils, what lies beneath and above them, and the entire biodiversity and ecosystem services that they nurture. By the end of this chapter, we hope that you will decide for yourself what sort of relationship you want to foster with the source of life that is the soil. This chapter is complementary to Food Futures, which covers the food system in depth.