Biodiversity & nature

Soil

Soil feeds us and gives us shelter. It holds and cleans our water. It even regulates the earth's climate. Soil is the ultimate natural resource for all life on earth.

Yet erosion, salinisation, compaction, land slides and contamination - all triggered by the way we farm and use our land today - are causing the degradation of this fundamental resource.

It takes 500 years years to create 2cm of soil. Between 1990 and 2000 in the EU alone 136 hectares of land (200 football fields) was sealed under cement or concrete every day making it unable to provide any further functions. It is often the most productive agricultural land that is built on.