On 5th December 2024, World Soil Day, YPARD Zambia hosted a YPARD Café dubbed "Youth Led Interventions for Soil Health and Climate Resilience". The event, which took place through an online platform, was meant to Convene a diverse group of young leaders to discuss youth led soil health interventions for climate resilience explore diverse opportunities available for youth to make impact in the soil health sector and foster youth engagement to elevate soil health interventions for climate resilience in national dialogues.

11-22 NOVEMBER 2024: The UN Climate Convention COP29 was held in Baku, Azerbaijan, themed In Solidarity for a Green World. The Coalition of Action 4 Soil Health (CA4SH) is a motivated, multi-stakeholder coalition working to strengthen, facilitate and accelerate the adoption and scaling of soil health restoration practices. Soil health drives productivity and economic growth, rural livelihoods, biodiversity protection, and mitigation and adaptation to the climate crisis.

At COP29, CA4SH convened members, partners, and other stakeholders to underscore the critical importance of including soil in the climate proceedings. CA4SH held and participated in several sessions that teased apart the intricacies of scaling global soil health on the ground through finance, policy, support for farmers and land managers, and more. Keeping soil health on the climate agenda is an overarching objective of CA4SH, and at COP29, the power of multistakeholder voices was heard. Read on for an overview of our engagement!

The IFRC Limitless Innovation Challenge is a chance for youth around the World to showcase their innovations for climate and the environment. Daniel Chavo Kisekka of the #Youth4Soil Initiative has submitted his climate solution Nurtavest to support smallholder farmers in Uganda, and the World over.

We are calling on the CA4SH network to help support him by engaging with his pitch video, which could place him in the top 100 innovations!

More than 12 thousand attendees, 450 speakers in 160 talks and more than 150 exhibitors in the lastest edition of the event organized by the Argentine No-till Farmers Association, held for the first time in the City of Buenos Aires.

The newly-announced list, published by the World Food Prize Foundation, features 38 changemakers working to improve global food systems.

Among the distinguised cohort is CA4SH Lead and Co-Founder, Dr Leigh Ann Winowiecki! Congratulations, Leigh!

This is the first in our series of interviews with the LUNZ Soil Health and Carbon Dynamics TAG community, in which we explore the key themes we’ll be working on over the next 40 months.

In this instalment, TAG co-leads Ellen Fay (Sustainable Soils Alliance) and Professor Pete Smith (University of Aberdeen) dig into some of the challenges around soil carbon, including how it relates to soil health, how it is measured, where its greatest opportunities lie and its role in land use change and net zero.

The full interview can be viewed on the LUNZ YouTube channel here, or read on for a summary of the key takeaways.

At the recent IUSS Centennial Celebration and Congress held in Florence, Italy, on May 19-21, the British Society of Soil Science (BSSS) hosted a fireside chat focused on the pivotal role of policy in addressing soil degradation and promoting sustainable land management.

Founded as the International Society of Soil Science (ISSS) on 19th May 1924, the International Union of Soil Scientists (IUSS), with the Italian Soil Science Society (SISS) welcomed more than 1500 scientists from all over the world to Rome, Italy, where the IUSS was founded, to celebrate 100 years of action on soils.

CA4SH’s Webinar Series was held over three sessions in the lead-up to the Africa Fertilizer and Soil Health Summit to address key challenges currently constraining farmers to implement healthy soil practices. The first two sessions were held under the topics of bringing soil health into policy and financing healthy soil practices. This third session focused on the science and knowledge needed to generate actionable data for soil health monitoring and scaling up, informing and tracking soil health practices on the ground whilst addressing key barriers.

Biome Makers, a global agtech company, announces the release of its 2023 Impact Report, which details the company's significant contributions to regenerative agriculture and soil health over the past year. The report highlights Biome Makers’ commitment to sustainability and the innovative use of its BeCrop technology.

Understanding of African ecosystems; initiative that establishes baseline and monitoring for land degradation assessment and rehabilitation

Story and photo essay by: Anthony Ochieng Onyango and Faith Tuarari

In a recent review of contemporary, peer-reviewed literature, CIFOR-ICRAF Land Health Data Analyst, Eva Wanjiru Murigi uncovered nuances of how scientific concepts of soil affects how we value and measure soil health, and why.

In an era where soil degradation threatens food security and environmental stability worldwide, the International Biochar Initiative (IBI) is at the forefront of promoting biochar as a circular solution. The 2023 Global Biochar Market Report, co-authored with the US Biochar Initiative (USBI), presents an in-depth analysis of the biochar industry’s growth and its crucial role in improving soil health on a global scale.

From afar, scaling soil health by switching from traditional monocrop agricultural systems to regenerative systems may seem as easy as planting the right plants in the right spot. However transitioning to new systems usually sees farmers’ yields decrease before they increase, which can be a limiting factor for farmers who don’t have a financial cushion to fall back on. Support is needed to help them bridge the gap.

CA4SH is a multi-stakeholder partnership of member states, the private sector, research institutions, civil society, farmer organizations, multilateral organizations, NGOs, and more. Drawing on this wealth of knowledge, we organized the second installation of our 2024 Webinar Series: The road ahead for soil health action to explore different mechanisms to invest in soil health, making sure these investments reach smallholder farmers.

Worldwide, agriculture employs the largest portion of youth (around 60% in Africa, for example), making soil health central to youth empowerment and food security in developing countries where agriculture's contribution to GDP exceeds 20%. Youth can participate in advocacy for soil and land health through political fora, techno-communications, community action, research and more.

Roël D. Houdanon, Founder & Chief Technical Advisor of the Land and Health Association, shares his thoughts on avenues for youth participation and his unique story of moving through advocacy spaces and championing soil health, as well as a case study for youth action on the ground.

For the Coalition of Action 4 Soil Health (CA4SH), 2023 was marked by continual learning and exponential growth, and we are celebrating by launching the inaugural Annual Report. Highlights include a reflection on our roots and growing the Coalition (which now has over 170 multistakeholder members and counting!), zooming in on key engagements, advocating for soil health in the climate agenda, achievements, lessons learned, and a look at what’s to come.

CA4SH is a multi stakeholder partnership of member states, the private sector, research institutions, civil society, farmer organizations, multilateral organizations, NGOs, and more. Drawing on this wealth of knowledge, we organized the first installation of our 2024 Webinar Series: The road ahead for soil health action.

More than 25% of the World’s land surface lies under the care of Indigenous Peoples, but their voices are often left out of conversations on food systems and soil health. To fill knowledge gaps around the impact of Indigenous land management on soil health, and generate evidence to support an enabling environment for Indigenous Peoples to enjoy and benefit from their important roles as land managers, CA4SH is teaming up with The Indigenous Partnership for Agrobiodiversity and Food Sovereignty (TIP) on a joint programme. This will feed into an upcoming Global Gathering on Indigenous Peoples Food Systems planned next year and a medium-term plan for 2030 to follow.

21 FEBRUARY 2024: The Coalition of Action 4 Soil Health (CA4SH) Steering Committee met to discuss actions and foci for the coming year.

Moving forward, CA4SH is committed to keeping soil health in the agenda, scaling it to other arenas (e.g., UNCBD, UNFSS), and further articulating its presence, while moving forward through implementation on the ground and resource mobilization.

Conserve soils to meet global climate, land and biodiversity goals, say experts.

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Image: Soil testing in Malawi. Photo by Kelvin Trautman/CIFOR-ICRAF