Touch the Soil News #2063 (photo – Farmland – courtesy of USDA , Public Domain)
The non-profit International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (iPES), which is a thinktank on global food systems recently released a report called the Land Squeeze. Coming out of the report is the impact of financial interest in farmland from the point of investment, bringing more competing dollars making it difficult for farmers to compete. Other concerns included estimates that 40 percent of the world’s land is at risk of degradation.
Moving away from the report, farmland soil improvement and salt remediation holds promise. Rescuing acres from degradation and improving land productivity is emerging as a new economic and financial answer to growers of all sizes and crops. Benefits of soil microbes to fix nitrogen, help in phosphorus solubilization, suppression of pests and pathogens, and aiding against environmental stresses such as drought and decomposition to aid soil health are not false promises.
For the land perspective, you can visit the iPES website and download the report here: https://ipes-food.org/
