The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has been strengthening its Global Soil Partnership (GSP) to promote sustainable soil management and governance globally. DANIEL ESSIET reports.
The Food and Agriculture Organisation’s Global Soil Partnership (GSP) has been working for the past decade with many countries and over 500 partners to address soil-related issues on the Global Agenda.
GSP has been creating a network of partners to promote sustainable soil management and soil governance globally.
Recently, the organisation received $20 million from the United States to fast-track a digital soil nutrient mapping in sub-Saharan Africa, which will benefit Nigeria.
The project is designed to improve the efficiency in the use of fertiliser and, thereby, boost food security and nutrition. FAO Director-General, Qu Dongyu, stated: “This contribution is timely and allows us to scale up the use of soil mapping in regions where it is most needed and where we are seeing a decline in fertiliser use due to price hikes. By understanding what nutrients our soils and crops need, we will reduce waste when applying fertiliser and increase their effectiveness.”
U.S. Permanent Representative to FAO and the Rome-based UN agencies, Ambassador Cindy McCain, announced the contribution during a visit to Guatemala and Honduras.
The funds will help tackle what she called “an unparalleled global food crisis’’and address the needs many countries are facing due to skyrocketing food and fertiliser prices.
The impacts of the climate crisis such as frequent droughts, floods and high temperatures, also put food security and nutrition at risk. Managing soils sustainably to increase resilience and adapt to these changes is essential and must be based on informed decisions and continuous monitoring of soil health.
The funding will be used to conduct targeted soil nutrient mapping to systematise and improve the soil maps in Guatemala and Honduras, as well as in other countries in Central America and sub-Saharan Africa, where, McCain noted, FAO has proven experience in building capacity and digitising soil maps, which have fast, positive impacts on crop yields and sustainability. FAO has been supporting the scaling up of a pioneering project in Ethiopia, where agriculture is practised by smallholders – accounts for 40 per cent of value-added economic activity and employs more than 80 per cent of the population. That project used digital soil nutrient mapping technologies to generate timely information, particularly on how to optimise fertiliser use, and has led to yields and availability increases of high-quality grains in the country.
Fostering the creation of national soil databases and soil information systems as public goods to be used by policymakers, the private sector and especially farmers can generate long-term benefits, as well as improve short-term flexibility to adapt to trends in fertiliser markets and climate dynamics without compromising output.
FAO’s GSP has been supporting countries in establishing national soil information systems and developing country-driven global maps, including the Global Soil Organic Carbon Map, the Global Soil Organic Carbon Sequestration Potential Map, the Global Salt Affected Soils Map and the Global Black Soil Distribution Map.
To date, GSP has reached more than 500 national experts from 52 countries in Central America and sub-Saharan Africa and supported them in producing high priority data products focusing on major soil threats, potential of soil resources to address the impacts of the climate crisis and tackle food insecurity.
FAO is also working to boost soil health and productivity, the establishment of the Global Soil Information System (GLOSIS) and Global Soil Laboratory Network (GLOSOLAN) to improve the capacities of soil laboratories, including soil spectroscopy for rapid, cost-effective and non-destructive characterisation of soil properties.
The FAO-UNESCO Soil Map of the World, which was launched in 1961, is a world reference base. Increased efforts, often using geospatial and machine-learning technologies, are leading to greater precision and nutrition-sensitive policy tools, as well as pathways to improve the return on investments from agricultural input such as fertiliser.