The Netherlands Food Partnership looked at contextualizing the Soil Health Resolution in a May Meeting
On 15 May, the Netherlands Food Partnership (NFP) convened a network session to discuss the potential the Soil Health Resolution offers for transforming food systems as per their objectives. NFP, which is endorsed and funded by the Netherlands government, is a consortium of initiatives by Dutch organisations and partners from Low and Middle Income Countries working towards food and nutrition security and achieving SDG2 by 2030. With soil serving as the very foundation of food systems, scaling soil health is a major part of their remit.
The objectives of the session were threefold:
receive feedback and input for the text of the Soil Health Resolution;
discuss expectations on the use of the Resolution in policy processes at national, regional, and global levels; and
clarify what Dutch expert organisations and companies would like to do or not do when it comes to scaling soil health in Low and Middle Income Countries.
Dr Leigh Ann Winowieck, CIFOR-ICRAF Soil and Land Health Global Research Lead and CA4SH co-Lead, presented updates from CA4SH to inform participants on our policy engagements so far. This includes the CA4SH Policy Room, as well as 6 country policy briefs we co-produced with partner AICCRA last year, examining how soil health is integrated into NDC policies.
Dr Winowiecki also shared background on the Soil Health Resolution, including presenting it at the UNFCCC COP27 and co-hosting the first-ever Food Systems Pavilion. At the COP27 last year, there was no existing pathway to have the Resolution taken up, but it will officially be announced at the upcoming UN Food Systems Summit Stocktaking Moment, and CA4SH is currently reaching out to several governments to prepare for COP28. The key message from Dr Winowiecki is that the point of the Resolution is not the exact text, but how it gets soil health recognized in NDC negotiations and in multinational dialogue. Mobilization has already begun with interest from several Member States and the Resolution was recently cited in the Mission Soil Manifesto from the EU Commission.
Alongside several upcoming policy engagements situated on the road to COP28 (pictured below), the African Union Fertilizer and Soil Health (AFSH) Summit will bring together high-level stakeholders to negotiate a 10-year action plan for African agriculture. With several partners in Africa, NFP invited CA4SH partner IFDC to share updates on the Summit.
The first AU Fertilizer and Soil Health Summit led to the Abuja Declaration in 2006, which set a target for 50 kg/ha of mineral nutrients in African soils by 2020. Today, that number averages between 15-20 kg/ha, so there is still a long way to go in scaling food and nutrition security in Africa. Prem Bindraban, Director of the Europe-Netherland Office for IFDC & Program Leader for the IFDC FERARI program, shared that the IFDC advocates for integrating supplemental mineral fertilizers that are sustainable, using locally available nutrients to scale soil health in Africa. Their report on Fertilizer and Soil Health in Africa discusses how the goals of increasing agricultural productivity, adapting to climate change, and achieving food and nutrition security are within sight of the updated 10-year action plan that will come out of the Summit.
What’s Next?
The key element of the Soil Health Resolution is that it translates a complex topic into a simple message to influence agendas. The challenge is in moving from theory and policy to practice, which is why CA4SH partners from various sectors are committed to making this implementation happen on the ground.
The upcoming AU Fertilizer and Soil Health Summit is an opportunity for national governments to have a dialogue on national and continental policies in Africa. (Date and venue of this Summit are not yet confirmed, probably mid-2023.) In January, the Netherlands put out a call for grant proposals for the Subsidy Soil Fertility Programme in East and West Africa which are now being processed. In any context, at any scale, or within any sector, soil is a unifier that brings together dialogues around food security, biodiversity, the climate crisis, the decade of ecosystem restoration, food systems transitions, and more.
Dr Winowiecki concluded that, in short, the message of soil health should be as simple as ‘water is life’. Like soil as a public good that has farmers as its stewards that deserve support.
Moving forward, participants in the NFP May session were encouraged to reach out to Dutch members of the CA4SH Policy Working Group, SNV and Rabobank, or the CA4SH Coordination Team with their feedback on the text of the Soil Health Resolution, and to engage in any and all policy events to scale global soil health together.
