Soil security: A key role for sustainable food productivity

Abstract

Soil health, soil quality, and soil security, all the three mainly focused on the status of the soil fertility that is essential for all living things in the terrestrial environment. Due to several anthropogenic and natural sources, soil degradation is one of the major constraints for agricultural productivity. Around 40% of the arable land is already degraded for various factors including urbanization and soil sealing, soil acidification, salinization, soil erosion, soil contamination, etc. Despite there is a link between soil quality and food productivity, the status of global food production has been updated regularly rather than the status of world soil resources. Both the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) emphasized to ensure the food security globally as we need to serve more than 9 billion people by 2050. Further, the soil acts as a carbon sink efficiently rather than aquatic ecosystems in many parts of the world, which will help to mitigate the climate change. Hence, the soil protection is of the utmost importance for all the securities especially water, food, and energy. Sustainable soil management and agricultural practices such as efficient water utilization, climate-smart agriculture, AeroFarms, and organic farming are the key aspects to ensure the food security globally.