Ensuring sustainable food production and the provision
of safe and nutritious food for healthy diets, while adapting
to the accelerating climate crisis and degrading environment,
is important for every modality and scale of
agricultural production systems. From large-scale market-
oriented commodity farms to small local producers, it
is simply essential for food and nutrition security as well as
for water security. Future-proof food production systems
should be environmentally resilient, economically viable
and socially acceptable.
Soil is crucial for producing the staple crops feeding most
of the world’s population. Soil is transformed by agricultural
management, particularly those practices that directly
affect soil structure, soil organic matter and carbon content,
soil fertility, and biodiversity. This has consequences
for environmental quality and human health.
To increase soil organic matter or at least avoid or reduce
its loss and soil degradation, agricultural systems that build
soil biological activity, organic carbon, and soil structure,
while sustaining food, fiber and bioenergy production,
must be promoted. Solutions may vary and depend on
the activity, regional social and economic conditions and
ecosystem characteristics. Nature-based solutions, such
as agroforestry, agroecology, and regenerative agriculture,
are some of the examples and are the basis for the
development of region- or even site-specific solutions.
Healthy soils with high organic carbon levels maintain
ecological functions and provide ecosystem services as
they can better cycle and retain moisture and nutrients,
thus being resilient to extreme weather events and less
vulnerable to erosion, disease, and pests. This helps sustain
productivity and promotes climate change adaptation
of agroecosystems.