Why Soil Health Matters Now More Than Ever!
Historically, soil science navigated efficiently towards ensuring soil quality for the high-yielding crop returns and the immediate environment. However, the new set of issues, such as climate change, degradation of soils, and loss of biodiversity globally, brings attention to soil. Read this article to discover the concept of soil health and the legislation within the EU, focusing on soil health.
Soil quality
Historically, the term soil quality has been widely used in the agricultural sciences until the 21st century. The term “soil quality” refers to humans and ultimately measures the quality of soil for plant growth, livestock, and the immediate environment.
From soil quality to soil health!
However, Lehmann et al. (2020) argue that the term “soil health” is distinct from soil quality, as soil health excludes intermediate human functions and links to ecosystem services that are essential for achieving global sustainability goals. The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation defines soil health as “the ability of the soil to sustain the productivity, diversity and environmental services of terrestrial ecosystems”. The shift from the concept of “soil quality” to “soil health ensures that soil serves humans, biodiversity, and ecosystems instead of sole crop productivity.
Why Soil Health Matters Now More Than Ever!
The concept of soil health is now embraced by both policymakers and scientists to ensure global sustainability goals. Increasing crop productivity by mitigating climate change and preserving agroecosystems is one of the significant goals of sustainable agriculture (Tahat et al., 2020). Soil health is embraced more urgently due to
- The urgency in climate mitigation
- Issue of declining biodiversity
- Global concern about soil degradation
Push from United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
Healthy soils are known to deliver both carbon sequestration and provide crucial ecosystem services. Given the role of soils in carbon uptake, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has heightened the urgency of addressing soil health on a global scale. Additionally, Soil health enables soils to mitigate carbon and provide ecosystem services, such as (Lehmann et al.,2020)
- Water quality
- Human health
- Biodiversity
- Plant Production
The Soil Strategy 2030
The concept of soil health has entered EU policy. The Soil Strategy for 2030, included in the European Green Deal proposal, was introduced by the European Commission (2021), to:
- Ensure soil health and the derived ecosystem services from healthy soils are functioning adequately.
- Reduce soil pollution and ensure carbon sequestration
- Implement sustainable farming practices and restore degraded soils under common EU standards.
Overall, the EU’s Soil Strategy 2030 embraces “soil health” to it’s function in ecosystem services, carbon sequestration, and solving issues with degraded soils sustainably.
The EU soil monitoring law:
The EU Soil Monitoring Law, which passed on December 16th, ensures soil monitoring is conducted to enable soils to function healthily and sustain ecosystems, cropping systems, clean water, nutrient cycling, and carbon storage. The implementation of the soil monitoring law across the EU ensures (European Commission, 2025):
- Monitoring and assessment of soil health
- Improve knowledge on soil health and soil resilience
- Ensure plant productivity and food security
- Contribute to the climate and biodiversity goals
How betterSoil helps with Soil Health!
BetterSoil provides soil solutions that boost soil health in the long term through sustainable soil management solutions. The betterSoil framework of soil management includes principles of regenerative agriculture and enables biodiversity, environmental services, climate mitigation, and plant productivity. Given the global push toward addressing challenges like climate change, environmental health, and biodiversity decline, and the immediate soil degradation problems and biodiversity decline within the EU, the policy push has also been directed towards “soil health” and remains a crucial step in implementing practically on the ground. BetterSoil aims to bridge the science and application through technology, partnerships, and deliver the solution to every farm. Please stay in touch, as we have an upcoming article on building climate resilience with healthy soils.
References:
European Commission. (2026). Soil Monitoring Law. Environment – European Commission. Available at: https://environment.ec.europa.eu/topics/soil-health/soil-monitoring-law_en
European Commission (2021) Soil Strategy for 2030. Available at: https://environment.ec.europa.eu/topics/soil-health/soil-strategy-2030_en
ITPS, F., 2020. Towards a definition of soil health. Soil Letters.
Lehmann, J., Bossio, D.A., Kögel-Knabner, I. and Rillig, M.C., 2020. The concept and prospects of soil health. Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, 1(10), pp.544-553.
M. Tahat, M., M. Alananbeh, K., A. Othman, Y., and I. Leskovar, D., 2020. Soil health and sustainable agriculture. Sustainability, 12(12), p.4859.
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (2022) Koronivia Joint Work on Agriculture (SBSTA/SBI 56, June 2022).