CA4SH Officially Announced as a VACS Champion
Photo: Kelvin Trautman
“As VACS Champions, CA4SH will contribute to this growing community of action-oriented organizations that are working together to achieve our common goal of better livelihoods and outcomes for smallholder farmers and the global community." - Dr Leigh Winowiecki
In late 2024, the Coalition of Action 4 Soil Health (CA4SH) Secretariat submitted an application to join the Vision for Adapted Crops and Soils (VACS) Champions Program of the Office of Global Food Security for the US State Department in partnership with the African Union and the Food and Agricultural Organization.
This month, we received an official confirmation that CA4SH has been invited to join the VACS family of organizations working toward resilient food systems, globally, by scaling climate-adapted crops and healthy soils!
"CA4SH strategically partners with VACS to accelerate impact together,” shared Dr Leigh Winowiecki, Co-Lead of CA4SH & Soil and Land Health Research Lead for CIFOR-ICRAF. “We are committed to generating actionable data and knowledge that can support all sectors and scales to support evidence-based decision making and scale sustainable soil and land management.”
An example of what CA4SH brings to the VACS community is robust and motivated partnerships supporting farmers and land managers to scale healthy soil practices. This was exemplified in a webinar held earlier this month, when CA4SH convened youth, pastoralists, government representatives, research institutions, tech companies and more to discuss increasing soil health data in Africa. The webinar was based on a pilot initiative with the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation, VARDA and CIFOR-ICRAF. The pilot project underscores the need for accessible soil health data that can empower smallholders to make strategic decisions to scale soil health and improve their livelihood outcomes. Moreover, soil health data can help direct support from other stakeholders to foster an enabling environment for farmers to action these data. Having a diversity of multiple stakeholders at the (virtual) table ensures that their individual, respective data needs are met.
CA4SH aims to reduce redundancy in the soil health space by aligning multi-stakeholders with common agendas, geographies, and work packages. In the soil health data space, for example, this may look like strategically filling data gaps through streamlined data sharing between organizations.
CA4SH is a meeting house for any organization wanting to take collaborative action to scale soil health globally. By becoming a VACS Champion, CA4SH will underpin the VACS primary aims with an action-oriented community of soil health advocates.
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