Soil health is high on the EU political agenda. The European Green Deal, and other policies, recognise soil health as essential for achieving objectives, such as climate neutrality, stopping desertification and land degradation or reversing biodiversity loss.
The Commission’s proposal on EU Directive on Soil Monitoring and Resilience was published on July 5th, 2023 with the aim to ensure healthy soils by 2050, closely aligning with the EU Mission: A Soil Deal for Europe goals.
Considering the importance of soil quality and condition for the success of Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) practices, BEATLES, represented by Blanca Casares, policy Expert and project manager at AEIDL (European Association for Innovation in Local Development), participated in the 2023 European Mission Soil Week organised by DG RTD – Bioeconomy and Food Systems Unit. This session focused its debate on that soils are the foundation of agri-food systems.
Last year, progress was made in monitoring soil health in the EU with the launch of the EUSO Soil Health Dashboard, led by the Joint Research Centre – EU Soil Observatory (EUSO). The dashboard provides a comprehensive and user-friendly overview of the state of soil health in the EU through 19 indicators.
Among them are some of interest to the Use Cases of the project, such as: tillage-erosion, nitrogen surplus, potential threat to biological functions, distance to maximum soil organic carbon (SOC) level, etc.
The dashboard also aims to support the implementation of the European Commission’s proposal for a Directive on Soil Monitoring and Resilience.
Author: Blanca Casares (AEIDL)
