Soil Integrity and Food Security

Mar 21

What is Soil Integrity and Why It’s Important?

Soil integrity is the health and quality of soil that contains essential nutrients and helps plants to grow and stay healthy. Healthy soil is important for enabling food security and agriculture. Soil provides food to 95% of the world.

Soil is a multifunctional system that supports various lives, including humans. Soil supports plants, and stores and filters water while providing nutrients. Apart from that, soils also offer a variety of other functions important to humans, including the provision of raw materials, acting as a carbon pool, a cultural environment, and soil harbors the largest portion of genetic diversity on the planet.

Soil integrity is foundational to food security because it directly affects quality of food.

Healthy soils and plants that grow in them also store carbon, helping to fight global warming. When farmers abandon an area of degraded land, nature takes over, and as the land gradually recovers it removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Relation Between Soil Integrity and Food Security

Soils provide food for 7 billion people today. But the availability of food is uneven - 1 billion people stay underfed. If food needs to be provided for 9-10 billion people by 2050, its biophysical, socio-economic availability and capacity have to be improved.

Proper soil management is key to realizing UN Sustainability Goal (SDG) 2, which is aimed at ending hunger, improving nutrition, and promoting sustainable agriculture. This is reflected in action point 2.4: “By 2030, we will create sustainable food systems and use farming methods that are strong and efficient. These practices will help us produce more food and improve the quality of our land and soil.” It means that achieving food security and maintaining it is a challenge. And soils play an important part in it.

Soils need proper maintenance, but their exploitation got intense due to increased pressure. For example, arable land per person in 2014 was 0.20 ha while 50 years ago this was some 0.37 ha, with regional differences, as reported by the World Bank. This alarming situation needs investments to restore, maintain, and improve capacity of soil.

Soil fertility is a fundamental pillar of food security. The quality of soil directly affects the yield and nutritional content of crops. Fertile soil produces high-yield crops that are rich in essential nutrients, contributing to the quantity and quality of food available. Conversely, soil degradation and nutrient depletion lead to reduced crop yields and poor-quality produce, threatening food security.

According to the United Nations, over 33% of the world's soils are degraded, and the situation is getting worse, because of unsustainable farming practices, deforestation, and climate change. Such degradation of soil fertility is a significant threat to global food security, particularly in developing countries where agriculture is the primary source of food and income.

Degradation of Soil Nutrition

The definition of soils has been changing, and so has its definition. But soils generally are defined as natural mediums for growing plants, as well as natural bodies, that consist of layers of composed mineral materials. The layer where biochemical activity remains is determined as soil depth.

Soil degradation is a major threat to food and environment, especially in tropical and sub-tropical regions. In 1992, Earth Summit and in the 2002, World Summit on Sustainable Development recognized land degradation as the threat to sustainable development. In 1994, a unique UN Convention to Combat Desertification was created to reduce land degradation in dry regions.

Defining Soil Degradation

FAO defines soil degradation “… as a change in the soil health status resulting in a diminished capacity of the ecosystem to provide goods and services for its beneficiaries. Degraded soils have a health status such that they do not provide the normal goods and services of the particular soil in its ecosystem”.

“Ecosystem goods” are defined as absolute quantities of land products that have an economic or social value for present and future generations. It includes animal and vegetal production, land availability and healthy soil, water quality, and quantity.

Soil degradation refers to a broad range of changes in soil characteristics due to both natural and human factors. These changes negatively impact the soil's structure and quality, reducing its ability to function. Humans also contribute to soil degradation by destroying forests, removing vegetation, and other industrial activities. We can divide such processes into two categories: soil materials being displaced, (like water and wind erosion), and physical and chemical deterioration of soil. These things reduce the soil’s productivity and its ability to handle environmental regulations.

Soil degradation is a big issue that happens in different ways like erosion, chemical imbalance, loss of organic matter, and salinization. Many factors are the main reason for soil degradation, such as climatic conditions, land, and vegetation. Not to mention the variety of farming practices, socioeconomic factors like poverty, political factors like political instability, and different conflicts.

Author’s Hot take

Healthy soil plays an important role in food security, and its degradation is one of the biggest environmental issues that hasn’t received much attention. The saddest thing is that humans cause such issues, resulting in 33% of degraded soils worldwide. What it means? Millions of people are losing access to food and it is a huge problem. No healthy soils - decreased crop yields, food nutrients become poorer. If you think that healthy soil is only about food, you’re wrong. Improving soil health not only improves food production but also makes our planet healthier.

In conclusion, soil integrity is the foundation of both food security and environmental sustainability. If we want to ensure stability in food growing, protecting our soil is a necessity.