Securing soil health as the foundation for strengthening planetary health
Pritha Kundu, Saikat Biswas
Abstract
Sustainable soil health is crucial to the current climate change situation and is linked to the health of humans, animals, and plants, promoting the health of the planet. It adds to the one health approach by maintaining secure and healthy food production, preventing soil-borne pathogen transmission, decreasing harmful agrochemical misuse, and sustaining ecological balance, which are all vital to human, animal, and environmental health. Soil, today, is being drastically degraded by erosion, nutrient loss, pollution, or organic matter loss resulting in decreased agricultural yields, deterioration of water quality, and higher greenhouse gas emissions. This is harmful to food security, human health, and ecosystem resilience. To transcend this and for the improvement of planetary health, implementation of sustainable soil health securing practices like integrated nutrient management, organic/natural farming, biochar, conservation tillage, crop rotation, cover cropping, organic amendments, agroforestry, afforestation, mulching, integrated farming system, precision farming (PF), biofertilizers usage, or use of soil conditioners has become the main step towards restoration of soil health and biodiversity for long-term resilience. Yet, limited awareness among farmers, initial high costs of sustainable methods, non-availability of quality organic inputs and biofertilizers, prevalence of chemical-based intensive farming, insufficient policies, and complexity in tracking and assessing soil health over time are the obstacles that need to be overcome. Additionally, enriching farmer education and capacity development, provision of sustainable inputs and technologies, enhancing research on soil health indicators, policy, and incentives are also necessary to provide resilient, productive, and environmentally friendly agricultural systems.