Welcome to part 5 of our mini series promoting #WorldSoilDay on 5th December 2021. Here we look at soil being the foundation of food, fibre, fuel, and medicinal products. This is part of our series on Growing Sustainably.
You can find all content in this mini series at Mini Series: #WorldSoilDay 2021 Salt Affected Soils.
If you already know that you have the power to improve soils and help climate change by making conscious buying decisions, here are the options:
- Check out #VoteWithOurMoney with 6 Steps to Help Stop Climate Change
- Try the Sustainability Roadmap with 40+ Solutions to Climate Change
- Use the Company Directory to Help You Grow, Eat, and Live Sustainably
If you want some more facts before making any decisions, let’s get into the details:
The source is content for this article is https://www.fao.org/documents/card/en/c/dd7761ba-8255-46a7-8bca-7dca1cbe6092/ and https://www.fao.org/resources/infographics/infographics-details/en/c/325860/.
Part 4 of this mini series covered Healthy Soils As the Basis for Healthy Food. This time we’re looking at soil as the foundation of food and medicinal products.
Key Facts
- 75–90% of people in developing countries depend on natural products as their only or main source of medicine.
- The use of solid biofuels – including wood – is predicted to grow by 300% between 2007 and 2030.
- Forests provide livelihoods for more than a billion people, and are vital for conservation of biodiversity, energy supply, and soil and water protection.
- Forest products make a significant contribution to the shelter of at least 18% of the world’s population.
- The livestock sector provides food and income for one billion of the world’s poor.
- Deforestation affected an estimated 13 million hectares per year between 2000 and 2010.
- The capacity of forest soils to act as carbon sinks can decrease by 20-40% as a result of the conversion of forests and native grasslands to croplands.
- The consumption of industrial roundwood is expected to increase by 50–75% between 2000 and 2050.
- About 20% of the world’s pastures and rangelands, with more than 70% of the rangelands in dry areas, have been degraded to some extent.
Soils Are the Foundation for Vegetation
Healthy soils are crucial for ensuring the continued growth of natural and managed vegetation, providing feed, fibre, fuel, medicinal products, and other ecosystem services such as climate regulation and oxygen production.
Soils and vegetation have a reciprocal relationship. Fertile soil encourages plant growth by providing plants with nutrients, acting as a water holding tank, and serving as the substrate to which plants anchor their roots. In return, vegetation, tree cover, and forests prevent soil degradation and desertification by stabilizing the soil, maintaining water and nutrient cycling, and reducing water and wind erosion.
As global economic growth and demographic shifts increase the demand for vegetation, animal feed and vegetation by products such as wood, soils are put under tremendous pressure and their risk of degradation increases greatly.
Managing vegetation sustainably—whether in forests, pastures or grasslands—will boost its benefits, including timber, fodder and food, in a way meets society’s needs while conserving and maintaining the soil for the benefit of present and future generations.
Soils Are the Foundation for Feed, Fibre, Fuel, and Medicinal Products
The sustainable use of goods and services from vegetation and the development of agroforestry systems and crop-livestock systems also have the potential to contribute to poverty reduction, making the rural poor less vulnerable to the impacts of land degradation and desertification.
Soils and Crops
The symbiotic relationship between soils and vegetation is most apparent in the agricultural sector: food security and nutrition rely on healthy soils. The nutrient content of a plant’s tissues is directly related to the nutrient content of the soil and its ability to exchange nutrients and water with the plant’s roots. Similarly, plant growth is influenced by the soils physical properties such as texture, structure, and permeability. However, the practices of intensive agriculture, monoculture, and deep tillage put soil health at risk by depleting the soil of nutrients, causing soil pollution, altering soil structure and water retention capacity, fostering soil erosion, and decreasing soil biodiversity, which is the basis of soil biological activities (e.g. organic matter decomposition and nitrogen fixation).
Soil degradation in agricultural systems is directly related to the overuse of fertilizers and pesticides, the removal of the crop residues from the soil surface and the use of heavy machinery. Additionally, nutrient depletion is related to the absence of the fallow period in intensive agricultural systems, and to the practice of monoculture (growing a single crop or plant on a field), which deplete soil nutrients due to static nutrient demand. Therefore, crop rotation is critical to preserving and eventually improving soil health.
Crops protect soil against soil erosion (e.g. water and wind), improve soil structure by rooting, and enrich soil nutrients by providing organic matter and establishing symbiotic relationships with soil bacteria.
For these reasons, sustainable soil management is critically important to addressing the growing food demand caused by population growth.
Soils and Pasture
Pasturelands are areas covered with grass or other plants used or suitable for livestock grazing. Grazing occupies 26% of the earth’s land surface, while feed crop production requires about a third of all arable land.
Because of their land use, livestock grazing and trampling are the main threats to soil health in pasturelands.
Grasses found on pasturelands protect the soil against soil erosion (e.g. water and wind) and support soil biological activities, which are responsible for decomposing organic matter and fixing carbon in soil.
Overgrazing remove the soil cover, fostering soil erosion, and reducing important soil functions such as climate regulation. As the severity of soil degradation increases, soil gradually loses its capacity to store carbon and other molecules, eventually emitted in the atmosphere as greenhouse gases.
Livestock overtrampling also affects soil health by causing compaction, which alters soil physical properties and reduces the water infiltration capacity, which hampers plant growth. However, the risk of compaction is lessened in soils with high organic matter content, as these soils are less sensitive to soil compaction.
For these reasons, vegetation plays a crucial role in preserving soil health in pasturelands; particularly grass type and pasture rotation as they help to keep the soil system functional.
As global demand for meat and dairy products continues to rise rapidly, soil protection and conservation on pasturelands becomes even more critical for maintaining livestock production and ensuring that the livestock sector does not encroach on land, forest, and water resources.
You can read more about regenerative agriculture and how it integrates livestock and crop production to improve ecosystem, store carbon in the soil, and reverse climate change.
Soils and Forests
Acording to FAO’s definition, ‘forests’ include closed forests, as well as open woodlands and savannas with at least 10% tree cover. Jointly with soils, forests play a key role in providing ecosystem services critical to life on earth. Among the most important services provided by forests and the underlying soils is climate regulation, which occurs through the release and absorption of greenhouse gases. However, deforestation driven by the use of wood for industry and fuel, and the expansion of agricultural lands puts at risk the capacity of forest soils to act as carbon sinks in the future. It’s estimated that this capacity can decrease by 20-40% as a result of the conversion of forests and native grasslands to croplands.
Without the adoption of proper conservation measures, deforestation leads to severe soil degradation as it leaves the soil bare and exposed to soil erosion agents. The preservation and improvement of soil health in forests relies on sustainable forest management, which must coexist with the agricultural, industrial, and urban sectors.
Key Challenges
Soil degradation is, in many cases, the direct result of poor soil management. The consequent decline in vegetation and its products such as feed, fibre, fuel, and medicinal products has an adverse effect on soil productivity, human and livestock health, and economic activities. However, vegetation cover, particularly dense and healthy vegetation, protects soil from erosion agents such as wind and water, and can improve its productivity.
A large portion of the population depends on vegetation for their livelihoods: about 80% of people in the developing world use non-wood forest products for health and nutritional needs and for income.
An estimated 2.6 billion people worldwide are dependent on wood fuel, including charcoal, for cooking and heating.
The livestock sector is by far the single largest user of land by humans. Expansion of grazing land for livestock is a key factor in deforestation, especially in Latin America: some 70% of previously forested land in the Amazon is used as pasture, and feed crops cover a large part of the remainder.
About 70% of all grazing land in dry areas is considered degraded, mostly due to poor grazing practices. Sustainable management of pastures, forests and other vegetated land is therefore essential for preserving soils and consequently supporting rural livelihoods, maintaining livestock production, promoting the growth of vegetation and ensuring current and future use of raw materials.
FAO in Action
Enhancing Crop-Livestock Systems for Sustainable Production Intensification in Burkina Faso
Despite its high productivity potential, the current agricultural land use in the moist savannah zone of Sub-Saharan Africa, and its development potential for livelihoods and sustainability are met with serious constraints. These arise mainly from poor soil health and low soil productivity, due to a combination of poor soil tillage practices, inadequate crop and pest management practices, inadequate crop diversification and crop residue management, and poor integration of livestock in the production system.
FAO assisted groups of farmers in five farming communities in the moist savannah zone of Burkina Faso to enhance their crop-livestock systems through conservation agriculture practices, including crop diversification, using an innovative farmer discovery process to bring about agricultural intensification and improvement in livelihoods.
Farmers experimented with expanding crop choices to increase the production of livestock feed while ensuring adequate plants for soil quality recovery. This included diversifying and expanding the range of food, feed, and tree crops, and their integration with livestock into the existing cotton and maize-based systems. Farmers also integrated conservation agriculture practices as a means to improve and optimize soil-crop-water-nutrient management for sustainable production intensification, given the poor current state of soil nutrient fertility, variable rainfall climate, and inadequate biomass availability.
Enhancing the Contribution of Non-Wood Forest Products to Food Security in Central African Countries
The Congo Basin is among the world’s major reservoirs of biological diversity, and is the home to some 100 million people, many of whom depend on the forest for their livelihoods. Non-Wood Forest Products (NWFP) are an important contribution to subsistence and income generation, with small-scale forest based enterprises playing a key role in commercialization. However, NWFP are hardly visible in the national economy statistics and the sector is mostly informal without proper legal, institutional, and organizational frameworks. FAO is working to improve food security in the sub-region by promoting the use and regulation of NWFP. The Organization collaborates with governments in multiple Central African countries to strengthen institutional capacities, enhance knowledge on forest resources and agroforestry production systems, and promote better coordination among all involved in activities related to food security and forest conservation through the sustainable use of NWFP.
Forest Rehabilitation and Restoration in Asia and the Pacific
FAO is combating deforestation and degradation in Asia and the Pacific by promoting Assisted Natural Regeneration (ANR), a process of regenerating degraded grassland and shrub vegetation by protecting and nurturing mother trees and their wildlings.
ANR helps forests grow faster than they would naturally by removing or reducing barriers to natural forest regeneration such as soil degradation, competition with weedy species, and recurring disturbances (e.g., fire, grazing, and wood harvesting). Already well developed in the Philippines, ANR is now being used extensively throughout the region to restore former forested areas that have become degraded and covered by Imperata cylindrica grass. The same principles are also being used to address the problems of poor regeneration in forests where most or all of the commercially valuable timber has been removed, in several other Southeast Asian countries. FAO has been promoting these techniques widely in the region through long-term demonstration plots, study tours and technology transfer.
You Can Improve Soils and Reverse Climate Change
I realised that the decisions I make when buying healthy food, give me the power to help climate change, encourage farmers to switch from degenerative to regenerative agriculture, and improve the health and happiness of my family.
Advocating for regenerative agriculture can seem completely removed from our day to day lives, however, the questions we ask in food shops, the healthy food we buy, and the conscious choices we make are all reminders that we have the power to improve our future and the health of planet earth.
Check-out our 10-part mini series on Conscious Buying Decisions to Help Climate Change with an article going live every week starting from 18th November 2021. You can also get the audio version by subscribing to our podcast or the video version by subscribing to our YouTube channel.
About World Soil Day 2021
Soil salinization and sodification are major soil degradation processes threatening ecosystem and are recognized as being among the most important problems at a global level for agricultural production, food security, and sustainability in arid and semi-arid regions. World Soil Day 2021 (#WorldSoilDay) and its campaign “Halt soil salinization, boost soil productivity” aims to raise awareness of the importance of maintaining healthy ecosystems and human well-being by addressing the growing challenges in soil management, fighting soil salinization, increasing soil awareness, and encouraging societies to improve soil health.
Find Out More at UN FAO World Soil Day
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Suggested Reading
If you like the topic of this mini series, you might be interested in these reading suggestions with links to each book on Amazon.
Find Kiss the Ground by Josh Tickell Here on Amazon*
Find Soil Will Save Us by Kristin Ohlson Here on Amazon*
Find Soil, Grass, Hope by Courtney White Here on Amazon*
Find Dawn Again: Tracking the Wisdom of the Wild by Markegard and Doniga Here on Amazon*
Find Diet for a Hot Planet by Anna Lappé Here on Amazon*
Find Growing a Revolution: Bringing Our Soil Back to Life by David Montgomery Here on Amazon*
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Sources Used to Create This Piece
Production Notes
This was produced by me, James Walters, as a personal project to help stop climate change by inspiring others to grow, eat, and live sustainably.
Any advice given is the opinion of those involved and does not constitute medical, financial, or legal advice.
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