Soil Health is a growing concern for farmers and other value chain actors in all parts of the world. Soils provide 95% of the food we eat, but 33% of the Earth’s soils are already degraded. Soils were high on the agenda of the 2021 UN Food Systems Summit and of the 2022 UN climate conference (CoP27).
In recognition of the importance of soil health, a group of Dutch stakeholders with different backgrounds started working in partnership to improve soil health for sustainable food systems and food and nutrition security.
Download the brochure of the Partnership for Healthy Soils
The Partnership for Healthy Soils aims to foster collaboration between partners in their network in selected countries, primarily in Africa, linking the relevant national, Dutch or other international experts to those. Jointly these stakeholders generate more synergy, implementation power, and impact on the ground in view of improved farming and food systems resilience.
To connect Dutch expertise to global initiatives for healthy soils, the soil health partners invest in specific joint action with international partners as building blocks for systemic soil interventions. The joint action is aligned and often co-developed with global partners, such as the Coalition of Action 4 Soil Health (CA4SH), the Global Soil Partnership (GSP), and the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).
All partners work from a food systems perspective on soil health, in view of contributing to innovative solutions that work both on technical aspects of soil health and on related economic and social aspects.
The partners' areas of expertise include: agronomic practices; database systems; remote/close sensing; soil-water integration; recycling and circularity; value chain and sector development. NFP facilitates the connections with the Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality of the Netherlands for effective policy alignment.
Companies, organisations, and research institutions working to improve soil health can approach NFP to become a member of the partnership.
Together we are now mapping the needs for soil health interventions in Ghana and Ethiopia, and are investigating other opportunities in Africa and South-East Asia. In 2023, partners intend to take action together within specific countries based on the country priorities identified. Also, partners will explore whether they could contribute with their network to the success of the African fertiliser and soil health summit (Senegal, June 2023).
..and more following soon!
