Published 12 August 2025

Healthy soil, healthy planet

Healthy Soil, Healthy Planet

Healthy soil means Healthy Planet

Why Agricultural Practices Matter NOW

Healthy soil is the basis for a healthy planet and its depending societies and economies. Soil health is considered as the capability of soil to ongoingly support and sustain all life and ecosystem services that depend on them. One of the critical ecosystem services that soils deliver is climate change mitigation by storing sequestering atmospheric carbon. Soil can store three times more carbon than the atmosphere, and five times as much as all terrestrial vegetation combined. Beyond climate, soil carbon is also a critical contributor to soil structure and fertility, nutrient availability for plants, and water infiltration and retention.

Key take aways:

  • Soil is a critical carbon sink.
  • Soil carbon is a key nutrient for terrestrial vegetation and all life depending on it
  • Yet soil is degrading at a faster pace than it can recover
  • Regenerative agriculture enhances soil health and biodiversity, benefiting planet, people and profit.
  • Healthy soil can ongoingly provide ecosystem services, from water retention and flood prevention to food production.
  • Currently 60-70% of European soils are unhealthy mainly due to conventional agricultural practices.
  • Many governments across the world have created Soil health action plans and strategies to turn the tide.

Why it matters NOW

Regenerative Agriculture it is not new, but why does it matter now? Since climate change made it to the global agenda in 1972 (!) all eyes have been ‘looking up’ to the atmosphere, however with the lacking progress on climate change mitigation and therefore the increasing need for climate change adaptation, more eyes start to ‘look down’ to what is right below our feet: the soil.

Nature has the capacity to draw down atmospheric carbon dioxide and converse it into soil carbon: a fraction of 6 to 8% of healthy soil is carbon (White 2020). The capacity of soil to store carbon compared to the atmosphere, is three times higher (Khangura et al. 2023). Therefore, the ‘4 per 1000’ initiative was launched at the 21st COP aiming to increase the soil organic carbon by 0.4% in the first 30-40cm of soil in all land per year to mitigate climate change, while improving soil health and food security (Khangura et al. 2023).

Soil organic carbon is not only a climate solution (Chabbi et al. 2017), but also critical to improve soil structure, fertility, nutrient availability, aeration, water infiltration, and water-holding capacity (Kharunga et al. 2023) and a key nutrient for plants and life depending on them, from grazing cattle to the humans feeding on them and on vegetables, grains, and fruits. They all form part of the natural carbon cycle, which has been brought out of balance by the reduction of natural carbon sinks and sources (such as forests, plants, soil, peatlands etc.) and the increase of artificial carbon dioxide emitters (such as burning of gas, coal, oil in transport, energy, and industry; but also, the use of chemical fertilisers). The result: not only climate change, but also depleted soils, affecting all life depending on them.

Quick fact: topsoils rebuild at a rate of one inch per thousand years, but globally soils are being eroded at a rate of one inch per decade (White 2020). Now imagine, agriculture takes up one third of the land surface and uses 75% of the world’s freshwater (IPBES 2019), therefore it is a large contributor to this problem, but also an impactful potential solution.

What is Regenerative Agriculture & Soil Health?

Regenerative Agriculture is a way of farming that enhances soil health and biodiversity, to such an extent that external inputs can be reduced (read: reduction of synthetic fertilisers, pesticides, etc. and of costs) while the land productivity and net income of farms can be increased. The ‘theory of change’ relies on working with nature, through maximising the biological balances and the inter-relatedness of the agricultural system (ecological balances), while minimising disturbances to these relationships and balances in the form of tillage, chemical inputs etc. (Giller et al. 2021; Khangura et al. 2023). This approach aims to minimise inputs and maximise outputs including restoring soil health and reversing biodiversity loss, while optimising the health and wellbeing of planet, people and profit (Schreefel et al. 2020; Khangura et al. 2023). ‘Soil’ is the base (Schreefel et al. 2020).

Healthy soil has the capability to ‘sustain the productivity, diversity, and environmental services of terrestrial ecosystems” (Intergovernmental Technical Panel on Soils [ITPS] 2020). Healthy soil is a complex living system that supports biological productivity, air and water quality, and plant, animal and human health (Kharunga et al. 2023).  Healthy soil provides critical ‘ecosystem services’, which are the services, goods and functions provided by nature that support life on earth and hence to grow healthy crops (Schreefel et al. 2020). Some of these ‘services’ include the provision of soil texture and capability of water retention, the creation of soil organic matter (SOM), maintenance of pH levels, and thriving microbial diversity, N mineralisation, soil respiration and the support of the mycorrhizae fungi who provide plants with critical soil nutrients.

Conventional agriculture has undermined much of the soil’s natural capabilities. The recently passed European Soil Health Law 2023 claims that 60-70% of European soils are unhealthy, mainly due to agricultural practices; and aims to improve soil health by 2030. Other regions have similar concerns and policies to improve soil health:

Regenerative agriculture and improved soil health can sequester more carbon, and create several beneficial impacts beyond carbon sequestration and climate change mitigation, so called co-benefits:

  1. Increased water retention, and hence irrigation and water usage efficiencies.
  2. Reduced soil erosion and enhanced soil aggregation/texture.
  3. Increased biodiversity.
  4. Enhanced natural pest and weed management with decreased synthetic inputs.
  5. Increased productivity.
  6. Increased resilience environmentally and socially/economically.

To ensure optimal soil health and ecosystem functioning, regenerative farming deploys different practices to increase soil health which generally follow any of the following six principles (Kharunga et al. 2023).

  1. Minimising soil disturbance, reducing or eliminating tillage.
  2. Maintaining living roots in the soil all year, incl. planting perennial crops.
  3. Maintaining soil cover all year, incl. planting cover crops.
  4. Increasing biodiversity, incl. crop rotation and diversification which provide habitat for different species and organisms in the soil and above.
  5. Integrating grazing livestock on cropland, incl. holistic livestock management, and crop rotation.
  6. Minimising chemical inputs, incl. fertilisers, insecticides, herbicides, and pesticides.

Read the upcoming articles in this series to dive deep in each regenerative agricultural practice.

Back to Resources