“What we plant in the soil of contemplation, we shall reap in the harvest of action”, said Meister Eckhart, the German Philosopher. Truly said, “Soil is where food begins”.
This session of CFS#44 was all about being more responsible to protect and sustain soil health. The importance of soil in our life and environment was duly recognized by the UN in celebrating 2015 as International Year of Soils as also by declaring December 5 as World Soil Day. With this much international attention, are we ready to ensure healthy soil?
Most among us know, soils are an essential and non-renewable natural resource hosting goods and services vital to ecosystems and human life. We heavily depend on soils, since ninety-five percent of our food comes from soils. Soils also provide feed, fibre, fuel, and filter the water we daily consume. Yet, often we choose to act irresponsibly, when it comes to the issue of managing soils sustainably. As we ignore the popular saying, “healthy soil for healthy life”, our neglect is costing us heavily.
Every day almost every one of us does something which degrades soil. With growing soil degradation everywhere in the world, the sustainable management of soils (SSM) has become even more important than anything else in food production. SSM, an integral part of sustainable land management, includes the activities that maintain or enhance the supporting, provisioning, regulating and cultural services provided by soils without significantly impairing either the soil functions that enable those services or biodiversity.
Read the full post on the CFS blog here.
This blogpost covers the CFS44 side event: “The Voluntary Guidelines for Sustainable Soil Management for the achievement of a zero hunger world”
Blogpost by Mahesh Chander – #CFS44 Social Reporter – mchanderivri(at)gmail.com
Photo courtesy Scott Bauer, Natural Resources Conservation Service, US Department of Agriculture
This post is part of the live coverage during the 44rd Session of the Committee on World Food Security, a social media project supported by GFAR. This post is written by one of our social reporters, and represents the author’s views only.
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