Health of the Soil (HotS) International Launches the "Love in Soil Again" (LISA) Initiative To Boost Soil Health

Health of the Soil (HotS) recently launched the "Love in Soil Again" (LISA) Initiative, a new plan that has been ambitiously designed to restore and facilitate deep-rooted craving, love, loyalty, respect and expertise for the health of our soils. This initiative is inspired in response to a historic veering away of farmers from the love and stewardship of the soil by adopting industrial farming techniques.

The LISA initiative is based on the understanding that we need to re-establish a faithful and caring relationship with soil through a soil-health, action-focused response. The initiative will offer learning opportunities and data-informed discussions and presentations to reconstruct our soil past, create awareness of the loss of love and stewardship of soil, highlight the resultant dire consequences, and ultimately help to restore ancestral love of the soil. This in turn will restore our soils through soil health principles and practices that leverage ecosystem-based approaches such as the soil food web approach in tandem with the regenerative agriculture paradigm.

According to Francis Bosah, Founder Health of the Soil (HotS), the LISA Initiative is a soil storytelling mission about the loss of love and respect for our soils the world over by adopting colonial and industrial techniques, with a focus on regaining ancestral love and why soil health is key to the process.

In his presentation titled "Africa's Failed Farming System: Repositioning Smallholder Farmers for A Net-positive Agriculture As A Basis for Inclusive and Innovative Business Models" in Rwanda at the IBMA Conference organized by Africa Organization of Technology in Agriculture (AOTA), Francis Bosah revealed that "Africa has come a long way the wrong way and needs to begin bending the curves." He stressed that a corporate agriculture carrot was dangled in front of African farmers, leading them to veer away from the love and stewardship of the soil. This has reached a tipping point and inspired the LISA Initiative which will essentially reconstruct our soil past and bring out the learning curves that will help us reach these soil health-based benefits:

• Using up to 50% less water for irrigation

• Having no need or little need for chemical inputs (which saves farmers money)

• Creating an agricultural ecosystem that seamlessly transforms atmospheric carbon into soil organic carbon

• Increasing crop production by as much as 150% per cent

• Creating economic stability for small-scale farmers

• Gaining important farming and business skills to empower businesses

With the LISA Initiative, "farmers and other stakeholders will have access to life lessons through stories or narratives that evoke powerful soil emotions and insights. It will also complement the ambitious efforts towards halting further biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse", said Francis Bosah."

Keep an eye on this space for updates and links to LISA outputs!