Suchergebnisse

"This book introduces the concept of soil security and its five dimensions: Capability, Capital, Condition, Connectivity and Codification. These five dimensions make it possible to understand soil's role in delivering ecosystem services and to quantify soil resource by measuring, mapping, modeling and managing it. Each dimension refers to a specific aspect: contribution to global challenges (Capability), value of the soil (Capital), current state of the soil (Condition), how people are connected to the soil (Connectivity) and development of good policy (Codification). This book considers soil security as an integral part of meeting the ongoing challenge to maintain human health and secure our planet's sustainability. The concept of soil security helps to achieve the need to maintain and improve the world's soil for the purpose of producing food, fiber and freshwater, and contributing to energy and climate sustainability. At the same time it helps to maintain biodiversity and protects ecosystem goods and services"--Page 4 of cover

Australian agriculture is world-renowned for leadership in harvesting practices, water-efficient agronomy, crop and livestock breeding, conservation tillage and development of fit-for-purpose farm machinery. While Australia exports two-thirds of its produce, it is a relatively small exporter when compared to countries like the United States and the Netherlands (Howden & Zammit, 2019). Nonetheless, our primary producers (or farmers) are among the most efficient in the world, with a long history of productivity improvement and adaptation to external challenges, including environmental extremes, price fluctuations, variations in international trade conditions and changes in government policy. Farmers have embraced innovation and shown willingness to adopt technologies that lead to improvements in farm practices. Governments, research providers and a range of other stakeholders have been critical to ensuring that the appropriate resources, policies and institutional arrangements are in place to support research, development and extension.

AbstractSoil degradation is a critical and growing global problem. As the world population increases, pressure on soil also increases and the natural capital of soil faces continuing decline. International policy makers have recognized this and a range of initiatives to address it have emerged over recent years. However, a gap remains between what the science tells us about soil and its role in underpinning ecological and human sustainable development, and existing policy instruments for sustainable development. Functioning soil is necessary for ecosystem service delivery, climate change abatement, food and fiber production and fresh water storage. Yet key policy instruments and initiatives for sustainable development have under‐recognized the role of soil in addressing major challenges including food and water security, biodiversity loss, climate change and energy sustainability. Soil science has not been sufficiently translated to policy for sustainable development. Two underlying reasons for this are explored and the new concept of soil security is proposed to bridge the science–policy divide. Soil security is explored as a conceptual framework that could be used as the basis for a soil policy framework with soil carbon as an exemplar indicator.