Create an AI-based digital platform to assess soil health, a soil health index certification system, and a free app to help farmers improve agricultural practices. These are the goals of AI4SoilHealth, a project funded within the Horizon Europe program.
The AI4SoilHealth Project
AI4SoilHealth ‘s mission is to improve the health of soils. So they will create a free app designed for farmers and farms that, by combining artificial intelligence and soil health measurement techniques, will define what changes in land management practices need to be made.
Involved in the project are 28 partners with expertise in soil health and 11 countries hosting 100 living labs where field experiments will be conducted to evaluate various regenerative practices. There are 8 objectives that drive the mission:
- Reducing desertification
- Conserving soil organic carbon stocks.
- Stop soil sealing and increase the reuse of urban soils
- Reduce soil pollution and improve soil restoration
- Preventing erosion
- Improving soil structure to enhance soil biodiversity
- Reducing the EU’s global footprint on soil.
- Improving soil literacy in society (1)
Why is it important to have healthy soils?
Healthy soil ensures the security of the food supply, which is 95 percent dependent on it. Twenty-five percent of planetary biodiversity also depends on the health of soils.
Several key ecosystem services such as carbon absorption, water purification, pest control, and prevention of floods, landslides, drought and desertification also depend on soil health. (2)
Soil health
According to FAO, 33 percent of soils are degraded, and it is estimated that if degradation practices continue at a steady rate by 2050, the percentage of degraded soil will reach 90 percent. In Europe, 60-70% of soils are in poor condition, leading to degradation and desertification. While in Italy 21.3 percent of the soil is considered potentially at risk of desertification.
The main causes of degradation are erosion, salinization, compaction, acidification andchemical pollution of soils. Other factors include the increasingly rapid urbanization of land, which is being contaminated by spills from industries or suffocating under blankets of concrete and asphalt. In addition, partly due to increasing population and, consequently, agricultural areas, soils are losing carbon, nutrients and biodiversity. (3)
Conclusions
Restoring soils is critical, and we have little room for action because of climate change. Climate change that healthy soil would help mitigate. Therefore, over the next 3 years AI4SoilHealth partners will collect data from farms and pilot sites and then share the results through a Europe-wide open digital infrastructure.
The results will also be shared with land management policy makers for them to implement active policies. One step in this direction is the European Union’s submission of a soil monitoring law for a transition to healthy soils by 2050. (4,5)
To spread awareness about the importance of healthy soils, IA4SoilHealth collaborated with UK communication partners-the Soil Association-to create a new website. (6)
“Only farmers and land managers are the agents of change in a landscape. As a community of open source researchers, we hope that by surfacing existing and cutting-edge soil information across space and time, we can cultivate an environment of self-determination for farmers, for the benefit of all our children“. (7)
Alessandra Mei
Notes
(1) AI4SoilHealth. Our challenge https://ai4soilhealth.eu/about/
(2) Dario Dongo. Soil protection, strategy 2030. THE ABC’S. GIFT (Great Italian Food Trade) 6.12.2021
(3) FAO. Soils are endangered, but deterioration is not irreversible. 4.12.2015 https://www.fao.org/news/story/it/item/357172/icode/
(4) Dario Dongo, Alessandra Mei. Soil protection, the European Parliament calls for binding rules. GIFT (Great Italian Food Trade) 25.4.2021
(5) European Commission. Proposal for a Directive on Soil Monitoring and Resilience. 5.7.2023 https://environment.ec.europa.eu/publications/proposal-directive-soil-monitoring-and-resilience_en
(6) Dan Iles. Artificial Intelligence to support European transition to healthy soils. AI4SoilHealth 20.9.2023 https://ai4soilhealth.eu/artificial-intelligence-to-support-european-transition-to-healthy-soils/
(7) Statement by Ichsani Wheeler, OpenGeo Hub Foundation.
Graduated in Law from the University of Bologna, she attended the Master in Food Law at the same University. You participate in the WIISE srl benefit team by dedicating yourself to European and international research and innovation projects.
