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Content produced by the Innovarum Team with inputs from different team members.

Experts have been warning about this for a long time already: Europe is losing its soil.

According to the European Environment Agency, erosion, construction and pollution have degraded 60% to 70% of the “live” layer of our soil: a layer 15 to 25cm wide, found just below the earth´s surface that hosts 25% of the planet biodiversity, providing food, biomass and raw materials and regulating water and carbon cycles – in other words, a key resource to fight climate challenge.

Soil degradation hampers ecosystems´ ability to produce raw materials and generates irreversible loses: it takes years to form just a few centimetres of soil, making it a non-renewable resource. Besides, its deterioration opens the door to desertification and speeds up climate change. This, at the same time, results in harder and longer drought cycles, linked to violent rainfalls that take away soil with them – in cases even eliminating soil completely.

In words of the European Commission:

Land and soil continue to be subject to severe degradation processes such as erosion, compaction, organic matter decline, pollution, loss of biodiversity, salinisation and sealing. This damage is the result of unsustainable land use and management, overexploitation and emissions of pollutants
EU Soil Strategy for 2030, EU Commission

The EU Soil Strategy for 2030

As a result of the previous challenges, soil degradation has become a key issue to be addressed in many agendas. Nowadays, it is possible to find international references for sustainable soil management, however, there is still no legislation that protects soil as an active in a European level. For that reason, last December 2021 the European Commission presented the new EU Soil Strategy for 2030, looking to produce a common legislation for the protection and sustainable use of EU land resources.

The role of agriculture in the EU Soils strategy

One of the key goals of the strategy is to make soil sustainable management a new reality. That is, to establishing a new set of regulations that assure soils are maintained in a healthy state (or recovered if in bad state), increasing biodiversity, fertility and resilience.

The EU Soils strategy connects with key EU strategies for the agrifood sector, for example, the strategy will work to regulate key principles of the Farm to Fork strategy:

These practices are also part of broader agro-ecological principles which are at the heart of the farm to fork and biodiversity strategies and their targets to bring back at least 10% of agricultural area under high-diversity landscape features, to reduce nutrient losses and risk and use of chemical pesticides, to increase the proportion of agricultural land under organic farming and to increase soil organic matter – EU Soil Strategy.

And will be in line with the goals of the #HealthySoils initiative -a key part of the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030:

(…) protect soil fertility; reduce erosion and sealining; increase organic matter; identify contaminated sites; restore degraded soils; define what constitutes ‘good ecological status’ for soils…etc.

Overall, working to implement sustainable agricultural practices:

“(…) sustainable practices include cover cropping, crop rotation, the incorporation of crop residues, contour farming in slopes, avoid heavy machinery, the safe and compost, preventing conversion to arable land, conversion to grassland, continuous soil cover, reduced tillage and chemical inputs.” – EU Soil Strategy for 2030

What is next for the sector?

The coming years will witness the first steps of the development of these novel strategies. These will be supported by broader innitiatives. For example, the Horizon Europe Framework Programme contributes to the transition to more sustainable soil management practices in varios ways, such us collaborative research.

Besides, there are important instruments available through the Cluster 6 Programme or in the priorities stablished in the Food 2030 research and innovation policy.

Moreover, the EU Mission, “A Soil Deal for Europe”, provides also an extensive framework that supports research and innovation. A key element of this Mission will be the ‘Living labs’ (experiments and innovation in a laboratory on the ground) and ‘lighthouses’ (places showcasing good practices).

All in all, a whole set of tools to be deployed, supporting a more sustainable, circular and green agrifood sector growing on “Healthy soils”.

Relevant resources

This article has been prepared by Anna Jorquera, Innovarum´s Senior Project Manager.

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