Why smallholder farmers are “hunting for healthy soil”

On 5 December, the CGIAR Environmental Health and Biodiversity Platform celebrated UNCCD COP16 Agrifood System Day, and also World Soils Day!

Investing in both agri-food systems and soils will foster environmental health and biodiversity.

A lively crowd sat down at the CGIAR Pavilion, excited to harvest knowledge from the experts at sharing about “Soil Health as the Foundation: Implementing and Monitoring Landscape Restoration for Achieving Land Degradation Neutrality and the Sustainable Development Goals.”

Soils are important because they link all the three Rio Conventions: the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) where are the most biodiverse ecosystem in the world, hence are central to biodiversity; the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) – as soils are one of the largest carbon sinks; if we don’t invest in farmers and soil health, we can’t mitigate and adapt to climate change; and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)- where effects of climate change like prolonged when have adverse effects on soils, sometimes leading to desertification.

Investing in soil health has not been intuitive – even though it should be
John Mundy, Director of Global Partnerships, Climate Finance and Technology lamented that one of the biggest challenges around protecting healthy soils is that there is not enough financial investment in protecting soils. This results in “smallholder farmers hunting for healthy soil.” There is no financial investment to tend and keep soils full of nutrients, organically fertilized, and biodiverse because these methods are cost intensive. Instead, it is easier for smallholder farmers to find new plots of healthy soil to farm, creating a negative feedback loop of land degradation and ecosystem loss. Therefore, financing smallholder farmers is crucial to incentivizing investment in their soil health.

Researching soil health does not stop after producing data
Another crucial part of the picture to protect soil health is research on the effects of different land management practices. However, while research can give evidence to a point, it might not mean anything to a farmer or ever get used if it’s not applied, nor if farmers are not engaged in the research process and implementation.

“Research is key in land restoration, but there’s a serious lack in applied science, which is not mainstream in labs,” shared Veronica Vasilica, Intern at G20 Land Initiative. Instead of being limited to narrow academic circles, she recommends that more research should support projects on the ground and have an impact. She also calls on scientists to collaborate more in the science policy interface to help frame findings that can influence the policies that decision makers create.

Leah Winowiecki, Soil and Land Health Global Research Lead at CIFOR-ICRAF said, “We cannot just give recommendations to farmers on how to manage land, we need to have conversations with them and co-develop solutions with them.” She gave an example of how CIFOR-ICRAF created “assisted citizen science days” where scientists engage with farmers while doing research to co-develop solutions.