The future is dry: Why soil is the sexiest climate solution

‘Drylands’ now make up nearly half of all land on Earth, excluding Antarctica, and droughts "fuelled by human destruction of the environment" cost the world more than $300 billion each year, the UN announced this month.

All over the world, fertile land is gradually becoming dry, barren and unable to support plants, animals, or people, as climate change causes temperatures to rise, and industrial farming leads to soil breaking down.

This is no joke. So why isn’t it the top story on the news every night?

Because soil isn’t sexy - and it all comes back to soil.

Soil underpins all life on earth. It is crucial to our every existence - without it, we wouldn’t eat. Soil is the largest living ecosystem; just one teaspoon contains more organisms than humans living globally, and the more diversity it holds, the higher the crop yields for us. Soil filters and cleans our water and prevents natural hazards like flooding.

It’s also the biggest carbon sink we have besides the ocean. Trees get the limelight a lot of the time, but soil actually sequesters 3-4 times the amount of carbon than trees.

That means the potential for soil to be a huge carbon emitter is scary. The way industrial farming works means that soil is being degraded and eroded by heavy machinery and monocropping - growing the same crop year after year on the same land - which, as we know, is not good for the diversity soil needs to thrive.

In fact, releasing just 1% of Europe’s soil carbon would be equivalent to the emissions from 1 billion cars, according to analysis by the NGO, Save Soil.

So if we continue to degrade our land at the current rate, not only will we make drought and food scarcity more likely, we will worsen climate change by emitting more carbon into the atmosphere, which increases both the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events.

Everything is linked to soil. It’s kind of magic.

A global meeting for soil lovers

Last week was the UN’s ‘desertification COP’, COP16, held in Saudi Arabia, which came just after the climate COP, COP29, in Azerbaijan last month.

What was on the table? Land, soil, farming and food security - and the financial mechanisms we need to mobilize funding in these areas.

Praveena Sridhar from Save Soil was on the ground in Riyadh. She told me, “We’re always trying to find a way to make soil relatable.

“We are here for funding, but at the moment the discussions at COP16 are mainly focused on semi-arid regions. It’s not just arid parts of the world at risk of desertification, it’s Europe too. We must not continue tilling the land, we need to move towards a model of regenerative agriculture - the time is right for farmers to transition.”

What is regenerative agriculture? In simple terms, it’s a way of farming that focuses on improving the health of the soil, plants, animals, and the environment. Instead of just trying to grow as much food as possible, it aims to make the land healthier over time.

That means practices like planting trees alongside food crops (agroforestry), minimising the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, keeping the soil ‘alive’ by covering it with all-year-round crops, creating habitats for pollinators like bees, and reducing tilling so that the structure of the soil remains intact.

Are farmers on board?

Many farmers feel neglected and attacked by top-down policies, with protests cropping up all over Europe in the past year. So, to encourage that regenerative shift, farmers must feel listened to - their contributions to society valued.

“Transitioning to regenerative agriculture and healthy soil is essential for reducing the farming sector’s emissions and restoring nature - but making the jump is still a significant challenge for farmers. They risk reduced yields for the first three to five years and often have to bear the costs alone,” explains Willem Ferwerda from the Dutch landscape restoration NGO, Commonland.

“Alongside the financial risks, farmers also need training and connection to a community of others on the same journey.”

Willem points to a farming cooperative in Spain, the AlVelAl Association, which offers exactly this kind of training to farmers in the region. They have a shared machinery bank, for example, which allows farmers to borrow - instead of buy - expensive tools that are essential for regenerative practices like ‘no-tilling’, green cover clearing, and applying organic matter to the land.

“The machinery bank is as radical for regenerative farming as libraries once were for knowledge - if only they could become the norm,” adds Willem.

Benedikt Bösel, a farmer based in Germany, agrees, telling me the transition is “urgent if we want genuine food security in Europe - and to protect ourselves against droughts and floods.” He adds, “one of the reasons we are seeing an increase in climate shocks is because our soils are unhealthy.”

How do we go about shifting the dial on a global scale though? Is it all about fighting the industrial farming lobby?

“No, I don’t want to go the fighting route. Incentivization is far more powerful, and we can do that through policy intervention,” says Praveena.

“Take insurance - when a farm is unhealthy, it should cost more to run. If you are a regenerative farmer, you should receive more subsidized help and pay less.

“You can’t just expect farmers to get on board without knowledge of how this will improve their lives. Take what happened in Denmark with the law on methane taxing for cow farmers, which was supposed to encourage holistic grazing. It was too fast, too soon, without any hand-holding or consultations with the farmers themselves - and they weren’t happy about it. This is the reason farming has become so politically divisive,” she says.

At COP16 this year, negotiators missed a vital opportunity to direct funds towards the regenerative transition. The meeting did not culminate in a decisive agreement on ending drought, which experts warn will have repercussions for generations to come.

National governments have always had agriculture budgets, even way back before the industrial revolution. So there is “nothing radical” about providing farmers with the means necessary to farm more sustainably, benefiting their livelihoods in the process, says Praveena.

It all starts with soil. Perhaps the most overlooked climate solution lies right beneath our feet.