More than one-third of the world’s land is degraded, undermining soil’s ability to produce nutritious food, store carbon, support biodiversity, and regulate water cycles. This degradation threatens progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals, particularly in fragile contexts and among vulnerable populations. Healthy food systems begin with healthy land—and healthy land begins with healthy soil.
Since the 2021 UN Food Systems Summit, global momentum around soil health has grown. However, critical gaps remain in implementation, monitoring, investment, and policy. Soil health is still underrepresented in food systems planning and investment frameworks. Many national pathways lack the tools, data, and resources to translate commitments into coordinated action.
Scaling soil health requires evidence-based frameworks, inclusive approaches, and strengthened technical and institutional capacities to support monitoring, investment, and implementation.
Session Objectives
Position soil health as a foundation for sustainable, equitable, and resilient food systems.
Facilitate multi-stakeholder dialogue for actionable recommendations and national implementation pathways.
Highlight robust, aligned, evidence-based monitoring systems to support policy alignment and track progress.
Showcase private sector and community-led solutions advancing soil health and competitiveness.
Identify shared challenges and opportunities to scale inclusive soil health actions and investments.
Expected Outcomes
The session will build a shared understanding of practical tools, approaches, and success factors to implement and monitor soil health at scale. It will strengthen multi-stakeholder collaboration—bringing together governments, scientists, farmers, Indigenous Peoples, youth, scientists, and the private sector—and generate co-created recommendations to integrate soil health into national and global policy and investment strategies. Discussions will highlight the role of soil data in driving financial investment and scaling solutions. The session will also inform a youth-led statement on soil health and explore mechanisms to integrate young professionals into future actions.
Speakers
Moderators
Glindys Virginia Luciano International and Strategic Relations, Project Manager, EIT Food
Praveena Sridhar, Chief Technical and Policy Officer, Conscious Planet-Save Soil
Panellists
Dr. Ivan Lule, Deputy Chairperson, National Planning Authority of Uganda
Dr. Leigh Winowiecki, Global Research Lead, Soil and Land Health, CIFOR-ICRAF, Coalition of Action 4 Soil Health (CA4SH)
Monica Nderitu, ECCR Advisor, Vi Agroforestry, SIANI Expert Group
Silvia Cardellino, Senior Programme Officer, Food and Agricultural Systems, IUCN
Job Kihara, Principal Scientist, Alliance of Bioversity and CIAT
Lynnette Neufeld, Director, Nutrition Division, FAO
Ajuna Tadeo, Programme Coordinator & Uganda Country Representative, Young Professionals for Agricultural Development
Emeline Fellus, Senior Director, Agriculture & Food, World Business Council for Sustainable Development
Silvia Cardellino, Senior Programme Officer - Food and Agricultural Systems IUCN
Pernilla Ivarsson, National Convenor, Deputy Permanent Representative to FAO Sweden