World Soil Day – Role of Soil Biodiversity in Boosting Food Production and Nutrition

Soil organisms play a crucial role in boosting food production, enhancing nutritious diets, preserving human health, remediating polluted sites and combating climate change, but their contribution remains largely underestimated, FAO said in its first ever report on “The State of Knowledge of Soil Biodiversity”. The report was launched today on the occasion of World Soil Day, marked on 5 December.
Despite the fact that biodiversity loss is at the forefront of global concerns, the biodiversity that is below ground is not being given the importance it deserves and needs to be fully taken into account when planning interventions for sustainable development, the report says.

“Soil biodiversity and sustainable soil management is a prerequisite for the achievement of many of the Sustainable Development Goals,” said FAO Deputy Director-General Maria Helena Semedo. “Therefore, data and information on soil biodiversity, from the national to the global level, are necessary in order to efficiently plan management strategies on a subject that is still poorly known”.
“We hope that the knowledge contained in this report will facilitate the assessment of the state of soil biodiversity as an integral part of national- and regional-level biodiversity reporting and any soil surveys,” she added.
Soils are one of the main global reservoirs of biodiversity. They host more than 25 percent of the world’s biological diversity. In addition, more than 40 percent of living organisms in terrestrial ecosystems are associated with soils during their life cycle.

The report defines soil biodiversity as the variety of life belowground, from genes and species to the communities they form, as well as the ecological complexes to which they contribute and to which they belong, from soil micro-habitats to landscapes. These include a wide range of organisms, from unicellular and microscopic forms to invertebrates such as nematodes, earthworms, arthropods and their larval stages, as well as mammals, reptiles, and amphibians that spend a large part of their life belowground, and a great diversity of algae and fungi.