No Healthy Soil, no Future

Soil is the very foundation of life on Earth. It provides the nutrients and support for plants to grow, which in turn feed us and all other living creatures. This precious resource takes centuries to form, making it effectively non-renewable within human timescales. Losing soil to erosion, pollution, and unsustainable farming practices means losing the capacity to sustain life as we know it. We must protect this vital resource for generations to come.

Save Soil is asking to incentivise farmers to adopt regenerator practices. This incentive is towards helping them buy new equipment, buy new seeds and acquire new knowledge to adopt a practice that will help them move towards regenerative agriculture. This is required because farmers are the stakeholders who have very little financial bandwidth. This funding that is required to farmers is not charity but investment in the future of humanity because, if 70% of the land which is now held by farmers is managed in a sustainable manner, then you know the ripple effects or the benefits, both direct and indirect, are available for the whole world.

The conventional methods of farming right now are actually not lucrative. They only seem lucrative because there are artificial subsidies by government programs where fertilisers are made available to farmers at a lower price than the actual cost of fertilisers to procure certain grains at a set price. Compared to other methods which may be regenerative and better for the land, the profitability or the safety in conventional farming is because of the existing ecosystem in which farming is operating. Therefore, if the government would actually start to financially incentivise good behaviour towards soil and land by providing access to natural input subsidies; by introducing farmer insurances for people who are adopting soil management practices that actually reduce the risk of crop failures in terms of climate shocks, be it drought or flood, will lead to a behaviour change of farmers because the government is changing the ecosystem to support such behaviour.

There are statistics about how much land is required to be under agriculture if people are consuming animal based products versus plant based products. When people consume plant based products, the land and agriculture needed is almost 50% or less than the total land and agriculture today. But expecting people to change their food habits overnight is not going to be a solution. In certain cultures like India and other parts of the world where the food consumption is not heavily animal meat based consumption, animals are almost seen as god-like because animal dung brings back to the soil the nutrition that is withdrawn out of the land. While dung brings back the micro cultures which support in building life into the land, it also adds the organic matter and nutrients lost due to the harvest of crops. Value addition from dung to the land is not really quantified as much as what animal meat or milk brings to human beings. This way animal dung is far more important in sustaining nutrition for the generations to come. The cows and bulls have a very strong role to play in ensuring our lands and soils are maintained sustainably and are kept alive for future generations to come. And today’s regenerative agriculture practices bring together both traditional and new age technologies to have effective use of animal dung and animal dung based products.

That organic farming takes more land to produce the same amount of food compared to conventional farming is an outdated thought because the present form of agriculture practice is an amalgamation of traditional knowledge and new technology which enhances the outcomes of the land. From what we observe from farmers who we train and move towards regenerative agriculture, if they follow all the things that we teach them from the get go there is no loss. If anything, yields only go upward. Let’s say they’re not able to follow all the instructions that we provided to them, the yield actually starts to turn around from the third year and by the fifth year, the yield in turn is usually greater than with conventional practices.

Companies that procure food like the dairy companies or the companies that supply vegetables, food grains, and all - what they could do is give a certain amount or premium to the farmer who has adopted regenerative practices. The premium is towards products that come from land that are maintained in a sustainable way. This is a very strong signal on how the production practice should happen to a farmer as well as to the governments and policies that can incentivise farmers further. The mechanism is always the market and when companies provide this signal that we welcome it to acquire products that are produced regeneratively, suddenly the behaviour changes among farmers which may actually lead to a transition quicker than even the policy based transition.

Also, one more thing is that, if companies directly or indirectly work with food and farmers across the supply chain that move towards regenerative practices, it actually leads to improved carbon sequestration by soil and land - improving the company’s reputation in the consumer's eye. Therefore, reducing the carbon emission along the entire production chain also puts companies in a better position in terms of how they are seen regarding their responsibility towards society by supporting farmers to do the right thing for the land.

For Save Soil, as a movement we are keen to push and support governments in adopting policies that facilitate farmers in adopting practices that will support soil life and health by 2050. We would want all the countries to adopt sustainable soil management practices. We want at least 50 to 80% of the farmers of the world to have moved towards regenerative practices which actually regenerates soil health.

Praveena Sridhar is the chief science and technology officer of the Save Soil movement. She has a master's in Environment Engineering and is a public policy expert. She has been working in the environmental sector for over 15 years. Over the years, she has worked on projects to deliver sustainable drinking water and sanitation, agriculture, and farmer welfare.

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