Measuring what matters: soil health as the missing metric in climate-smart agriculture monitoring
Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems Special Feature on Climate-Smart Food Systems
Leigh Winowiecki, Aida Bargués-Tobella, Romy Chevallier, Hanna Linden, Sabrina Trautman, Djalal Arinloye Ademonla, Jules Bayala, Robin Chacha, Jacqueline Hannam, Anthony Kimaro, Lukelysia Mwangi, Isaac Betserai Nyoka, Luke Ouko, Zampela Pittaki, Sieglinde Snapp, Zachary Stewart, Bertin Takousing, Tor-Gunnar Vågen and Rattan Lal
Abstract
Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) has become a central framework for addressing the intersecting challenges of food security and climate change. Assessments of CSA have largely relied on measuring the adoption of practices and technologies rather than the ecological outcomes they are intended to deliver. This article argues that the absence of systematic soil health monitoring represents a critical measurement gap in CSA, limiting the ability to verify whether interventions genuinely enhance resilience, contribute to adaptation and mitigation, and sustain productivity. Drawing on two decades of research, we show that soil health underpins all three CSA objectives - adaptation, mitigation and productivity - through its role in regulating water availability, nutrient cycling, carbon storage and biodiversity conservation. We propose scaling outcome-based monitoring to complement practice-based monitoring, positioning soil health as an integrating metric that aligns climate, land degradation and biodiversity agendas. Standardized landscape monitoring approaches, including repeated georeferenced measurements of soil health indicators through frameworks such as the Land Degradation Surveillance Framework (LDSF), demonstrate that operationalisation is feasible and can generate longitudinal datasets. The recent embedding of soil health indicators within multi-level policy frameworks and reporting systems signals political support for implementing consistent soil health monitoring frameworks. Strengthening soil monitoring infrastructure is therefore essential for improving accountability, informing implementation and enabling performance-based climate finance.
