Sifelani Tsiko Agric & Environment Editor

The wider promotion of better farming practices which do not harm the environment could deliver substantial benefits for food and water security, as well as climate change mitigation and adaptation, according to the latest International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) report.

The report points out that the way farmers till the land, grow and rear food has an important bearing on the state of the natural environment.

The new report, titled “Common Ground: Restoring Land Health for Sustainable Agriculture”, for the first time quantifies the potential societal benefits and monetary value of a large-scale, global adoption of cost-effective sustainable farming methods that boost soil organic matter and biodiversity.

These methods include agro-forestry and conservation agriculture, as well as the use of manure and mulching.

Broadly, the report speaks about approaches to farming that aim to help farmers across the world to make progress towards improving the environment.

“This report shows that by working together, farmers and conservationists can deliver long-term food, nutrition and water security to everyone,” said Ludovic Larbodière, senior expert for agriculture and environment with IUCN.

“Healthy, living soils and landscapes can indeed increase the resilience of food production to the negative impacts of climate change, and can secure the access to safe and nutritious food, particularly for the most vulnerable people in developing countries.

“To achieve this vision, we must stop thinking of agriculture purely in terms of food, fibre, fuel, and instead incentivise and reward these additional services farmers provide to society.”

The potential yield increases for maize, wheat and rice are worth an estimated US$132 billion.

As an additional benefit, the increased organic carbon content in agricultural soils worldwide would enhance their capacity to store water by up to 37 billion cubic metres, reducing the need for irrigation by four percent globally and potentially saving US$ 44 billion per year, the report finds.

By sequestering carbon, biodiversity-rich soils also help mitigate global warming.

The report estimates that the annual 0.4 percent increase in soil carbon content would translate into an additional 1GtC being sequestered per year on average.

This represents 10 percent of global human-induced carbon emissions based on 2017 numbers.

This contribution to climate change mitigation would save society an estimated US$600 billion per year in present value terms over the 2020-2050 time horizon, according to the report.

“This report shows that restoring and protecting soil and landscape biodiversity is a common interest between the conservation and agriculture sectors,” reads part of the report. “It demonstrates why the pursuit of a more sustainable food-agriculture system should give higher priority to land health.

“Major decision makers and economic actors largely ignore the ecological and living nature of soils, squandering many of the associated values and benefits to society. Farmers in particular need to restore and protect this vital capital for long-term profitability as well as for the wider benefit of society.”

Researchers say as long as agriculture depends on land, it must treat land as a finite, non-renewable resource, by eliminating over-exploitation and protecting the ecological processes that underpin production.

“The challenge for the food-agriculture sector is to achieve sustainability in the face of rapidly growing demand and increasing risks associated with climate change,” the report noted.

UNCCD estimates that reversing land degradation globally requires an investment of at least US$2 billion annually compared to more than US$619 billion of public subsidies and trillions of dollars of private investments flowing into agriculture annually.

Zimbabwe recently launched its Agriculture and Food Systems Transformation Strategy in fulfilment of the domestication of global instruments that aim to promote the right to food and nutrition.

All this is in line with the country’s commitment to end hunger and poverty in line with the aspiration of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals and the 2014 African Union Malabo Declaration.

The latest IUCN report lays out concrete steps that farmers, policy makers, government agencies and private companies can take to help foster a global transition to sustainable agriculture.

It also calls for broader use of agro-ecological approaches and urges the agriculture sector to adopt ambitious targets for land health.

The report further calls for national and global targets aimed at achieving a net positive impact from agriculture on key biodiversity indicators by 2030.