- How Caring for Soil Protects Farms and Ecosystems - September 7, 2025
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The Living Foundation Beneath Our Feet
Soil is not an inert growing medium – it is a living and life-giving natural resource. It is teaming with billions of bacteria, fungi, and other microbes that are the foundation of an elegant symbiotic ecosystem. Soil health is defined as the continued capacity of soil to function as a vital living ecosystem that sustains plants, animals, and humans. A single teaspoon of healthy soil contains more life than there are people on Earth. A teaspoon of soil (about one gram) may typically contain one billion bacterial cells (corresponding to about ten thousand different bacterial genomes), up to one million individual fungi, about one million cells of protists, and several hundred of nematodes. These microscopic workers form the invisible workforce that makes all terrestrial life possible.
Soil Health as the Cornerstone of Modern Agriculture
Soil health is the cornerstone of sustainable agriculture, serving as the foundation for crop productivity, environmental resilience, and long-term ecosystem stability. Contemporary agricultural methods, characterized by excessive pesticide and fertilizer application, monoculture, and intensive tillage, have resulted in extensive soil degradation, requiring novel strategies to restore and sustain soil functionality. At least 33% of global croplands estimated to be moderately or highly degraded. The urgency of this crisis becomes clear when we consider that it takes roughly 100-200 years to create just half a centimeter of healthy soil, yet we are currently losing soil 50-100 times faster than it can recover.
Carbon Storage Powerhouse Hiding Underground
Over the past 12,000 years, the growth of farmland has released about 110 billion metric tons of carbon from the top layer of soil – roughly equivalent to 80 years’ worth of present-day U.S. emissions. However, this devastating loss reveals an incredible opportunity. The carbon sink capacity of the world’s agricultural and degraded soils is 50 to 66% of the historic carbon loss of 42 to 78 gigatons of carbon. Carbon sequestration has the potential to offset fossil fuel emissions by 0.4 to 1.2 gigatons of carbon per year, or 5 to 15% of the global fossil-fuel emissions. Scientists estimate that soils – mostly, agricultural ones – could sequester over a billion additional tons of carbon each year. This makes soil one of our most powerful allies in fighting climate change.
The Hidden Biodiversity Crisis Beneath Our Feet
Agriculture is the main driver of the rapid collapse of biodiversity, upon which all life on Earth, including agricultural production, depends. Yet most people remain unaware of the staggering diversity living in soil. Beside microorganisms and microfauna, soil harbours different species of meso and macro/megafauna represented by arthropods, earthworms and mammals. The soil biota plays many fundamental roles in delivering key ecosystem goods and services. The economic value of these services is enormous – estimates ranging from 1.5 to 13 trillion US Dollars annually. When farming practices destroy soil biodiversity, they’re essentially destroying trillions of dollars worth of natural infrastructure that keeps our ecosystems functioning.
Revolutionary Farming Practices That Heal the Land
The adoption of sustainable agriculture practices such as conservation tillage, cover cropping, and crop rotation provides significant benefits for both crop productivity and environmental sustainability. These practices can increase soil biodiversity, nutrient cycling, and organic matter, which increase the resilience of agroecosystems. Strategies to increase the soil carbon pool include soil restoration and woodland regeneration, no-till farming, cover crops, nutrient management, manuring and sludge application, improved grazing, water conservation and harvesting, efficient irrigation, agroforestry practices, and growing energy crops on spare lands.
Sixty-four percent of practitioners mentioned increased soil carbon sequestration specifically. Moreover, widespread adoption and policy encouragement of regenerative practices is occurring.
Cover Crops: Nature’s Protective Blanket
Cover crops act like a protective blanket for soil, providing continuous living roots that feed the underground ecosystem. Living plants maintain a rhizosphere, an area of concentrated microbial activity close to the root. The rhizosphere is the most active part of the soil ecosystem because it is where the most readily available food is, and where peak nutrient and water cycling occurs. Since living roots provide the easiest source of food for soil microbes, growing long-season crops or a cover crop following a short-season crop, feeds the foundation species of the soil food web as much as possible during the growing season. This creates a win-win situation where plants feed the soil life, and in return, the soil life feeds the plants essential nutrients and protects them from diseases.
No-Till Revolution: Keeping the Soil Structure Intact
Conservation tillage is more advantageous for soil health than conventional tillage, a topic that is still controversial among scientists and farmers, and that various tillage systems exhibit distinct interactions. Traditional plowing disrupts the intricate networks of fungal threads and soil aggregates that take years to develop. No-till farming preserves these delicate structures, allowing water to infiltrate better and preventing erosion. Conservation agriculture: Encouraging minimal soil disturbance, permanent soil cover, and crop rotations to maintain soil health and reduce erosion. Conservation agriculture helps increase productivity while minimizing environmental impact. This approach has transformed millions of acres globally, proving that we can produce food while actually improving the land.
Crop Rotation: Breaking the Monoculture Trap
Increasing the diversity of a crop rotation and cover crops increases soil health and soil function, reduces input costs, and increases profitability. Using cover crops and increasing diversity within crop rotations improves soil health and soil function, reduces costs, and increases profitability. Different crops have different root structures and nutrient needs, which helps prevent the buildup of pests and diseases that thrive in monocultures. Research shows that higher plant diversity disrupts pest life cycles and promotes beneficial insects, which prevents farmers from relying on chemical inputs. Crop diversity also improves soil health. By having healthy soils, this “reduce[s] the need for chemical inputs while also providing habitats for beneficial organisms that help control pests and diseases.”
The Economic Promise of Healthy Soil
Healthy soil isn’t just good for the environment – it’s profitable. Soil Health Management Systems allow farmers to enjoy profits over time because they spend less on fuel and energy while benefiting from less variable crop yields resulting from improved soil conditions. Healthy soils also provide a buffer for precipitation extremes (too wet or too dry). An increase of 1 ton of soil carbon pool of degraded cropland soils may increase crop yield by 20 to 40 kilograms per hectare (kg/ha) for wheat, 10 to 20 kg/ha for maize, and 0.5 to 1 kg/ha for cowpeas. This means farmers can reduce their input costs while actually increasing their yields – a rare win-win in agriculture.
Water Management: Soil as a Natural Sponge
Healthy soil gives us clean air and water, bountiful crops and forests, productive grazing lands, diverse wildlife, and beautiful landscapes. Soil does all this by performing five essential functions: Regulating water Soil helps control where rain, snowmelt, and irrigation water goes. Water flows over the land or into and through the soil. Healthy soil can hold up to twenty times its weight in water, acting like a massive underground reservoir. During droughts, this stored water keeps crops alive, while during floods, the soil prevents devastating runoff by absorbing excess water. Climate change is making weather more unpredictable, so this natural water management becomes increasingly valuable for farmers and communities alike.
Pest Control Through Natural Balance
Two dimensions are important for the conservation of agrobiodiversity: providing habitat and resources for species inhabiting agricultural landscapes, as well as conserving functional groups that provide critical ecosystem services at the field level (i.e., pollinators, natural enemies, and soil biota). Key dimensions for natural biodiversity are the conservation of natural habitats for wildlife, the connectivity across landscapes, and limiting the external impacts of farmland management across the globe. Biodiversity helps to prevent disease and pest problems associated with monocultures. Using cover crops and increasing diversity within crop rotations improves soil health and soil function, reduces costs, and increases profitability. This natural pest control system works better than any pesticide because it’s designed by millions of years of evolution.
Climate Resilience Through Soil Health
More biodiverse systems will present benefits such as higher resilience and a wider range of ecosystem services. Biodiversity conservation is a systemic issue and our results clearly stress the importance of simultaneously addressing multiple aspects of biodiversity for effective conservation. Adopting practices that help mitigate climate change effects and increase resilience to climate variability. This includes practices like crop diversification, soil conservation, water management, and agroforestry, which can help farmers adapt to changing weather patterns and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. As extreme weather becomes more common, farmers with healthy soils consistently outperform those with degraded soils during both droughts and floods.
Real-World Success Stories
We found 27% higher soil carbon stocks on permaculture sites than on control fields, while soil bulk density was 20% lower and earthworm abundance was 201% higher. We found 27% higher soil carbon stocks on permaculture sites than on control fields, while soil bulk density was 20% lower and earthworm abundance was 201% higher. Species richness of vascular plants, earthworms and birds was 457%, 77% and 197% higher on permaculture sites, respectively. These dramatic improvements show what’s possible when we work with nature instead of against it. Farmers around the world are proving that caring for soil isn’t just idealistic – it’s practical and profitable.
The Future of Farming Depends on Soil
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has identified poor soil health as a major threat to global food security, a barrier to the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and a contributor to climate change. Degraded soils exacerbate the gap between crops’ current and potential yields, indirectly encourage deforestation by pushing farmers to expand farmland, and reduce the earth’s natural capacity to sequester carbon. With the global population expected to reach approximately 9.7 billion by 2050, we cannot afford to continue destroying the foundation of our food system. The challenge of sustaining life on an increasingly crowded planet of more than 7 billion people grows more complicated every day. By the year 2050, our planet will be home to another 2 billion people.
Taking Action: Every Farm Matters
These strategies, through the integrated management of the interaction of plant, soil, microbial, and human activities, would enhance soil health. Soil health is essential in yield optimization and promoting long-term sustainability. The transition doesn’t have to happen overnight. Many of the same practices that are believed to store carbon have other beneficial environmental and economic effects. For example, improving overall soil health can increase agricultural yields while reducing the need for agricultural inputs, saving farmers money. Every farmer who adopts even one soil-friendly practice contributes to a healthier planet and a more secure food future. The time for action is now, and the soil beneath our feet holds the key to our survival.
