More than half of Europe’s soil is degraded. Researchers have shown that restoring soil through better agriculture makes both environmental and economic sense.
Soil nourishes us, filters water, and supports most of Earth’s food chains. But they are also Europe’s most neglected resource, quietly deteriorating beneath our feet while we look elsewhere.
Andres Rodríguez Seijo of the University of Vigo in Spain is one of the researchers working to change that. He first realized how little attention soil received while working on microplastics, when the issue was just beginning to gain attention.
“Everyone was talking about microplastics in the ocean, but they ignored the fact that they reach land and contaminate the soil before they get there,” he says.
problematic soil
The soil in Europe is in a bad state. There is too much nitrogen, mainly due to overuse of fertilizers, leading to increased erosion and pollution. More than 60% are currently classified as unhealthy, and climate change is set to make the situation even worse.
The amount of compensation for this damage is already high. According to EU estimates, soil degradation across Europe is estimated to cost around €50 billion each year.
Seijo is currently coordinating InBestSoil, an EU-funded project that takes an unusual approach to the problem. The team is building a business case, rather than just appealing to environmental conscience. This provides hard numbers that show that investing in soil health makes economic sense for farmers, businesses and investors alike.
“This can be achieved by testing which strategies are most effective in restoring soils and at the same time are profitable choices for investors,” he said.
InBestSoil is one of the projects working under the EU mission “Soil Trade for Europe”, a continent-wide initiative to restore degraded soils by 2030. Alongside individual missions on cities, oceans, climate change and the fight against cancer, EU missions are large-scale initiatives that address some of today’s major challenges.
Lessons from the field
The InBestSoil team conducts trials across Europe. On the Italian island of Sardinia, researchers are comparing land management strategies to find approaches that improve both farm profitability and soil health.
Valentina Meleu from the European Mediterranean Climate Change Center and Gianluca Carboni from Agris, the regional agricultural research institute in Sardinia, are leading a Living Lab on Mediterranean agricultural soils, including field trials with local farmers.
They grow durum wheat using three different approaches. In some fields, traditional tillage methods were used, in which the soil is plowed and turned mechanically before sowing.
In other areas, we have reduced the amount of tillage to reduce the impact on the soil. And in the third group of fields, we tried to sow grass. The idea was to use herbicides to control weeds and then sow directly into undisturbed soil.
The results were clear. Conventional tillage caused the most damage, but reduced tillage and no-till seeding (turf seeding) helped increase soil carbon, microbial diversity, and nutrient levels. Importantly, yields comparable to conventional farming were obtained using less intensive methods.
“The results we have collected so far are very promising,” Carboni said. He added that by reducing tillage, farmers can save time and money on labor and fuel without sacrificing yield or soil quality.
“This is very important not only for production, but also for climate regulation, biodiversity and overall soil quality.”
Early simulations suggest that these technologies hold up well to future climate scenarios. “This shows its strong potential as an effective adaptation and mitigation strategy for this region,” Mérieux said.
The team is currently working with local stakeholders to consider ways to encourage farmers, landowners and businesses to adopt these methods.
Sardinia is one of nine experimental sites where InBestSoil is active. In Spain, a group operates in the dehesa system. Dehesa systems are a type of open grassland where grazing animals help regenerate soils that have been depleted by conventional agriculture.
In Lithuania and Croatia, researchers are focusing on urban and suburban areas where healthy soil absorbs excess water and reduces the risk of flooding. The complete network of experimental sites spans agriculture (Netherlands, Switzerland), forestry (Latvia) and mining land use (Spain).
Creating a business case
Once each trial is completed, the team will use the results to build a practical framework that allows farmers, land managers, and private investors to evaluate the returns of soil remediation. In other words, making healthy soil an asset to invest in rather than a duty to manage.
InBestSoil researchers are developing these frameworks in parallel with two sister projects, SoilValues and NOVASOIL, as part of a broader EU mission initiative that brings together science, business and investment around soil health.
The team is also building a web-based calculator to understand the value of healthy soils beyond the market.
“We believe that it is important to consider not only market benefits, but also non-market benefits when proposing business models, and this tool will provide us with an estimate,” explains Jorge Sánchez Navarro, a researcher in the Department of Agricultural and Cooperative Economics at the Polytechnic University of Cartagena in Spain, who is leading the study.
The valuation framework and calculation tools are designed for a wide range of users, from individual farmers to government agencies and corporate investors. This gives anyone with a stake in the land a common way to understand its underlying value.
Researchers are also paying attention to policy. The EU recently introduced its first directive solely focused on soil health. The Soil Monitoring Act requires the 27 EU member states to monitor and assess soil health across their territories, and InBestSoil’s evidence base could help inform how it is applied.
“Some ecosystems, like Dehesas, are more difficult to classify. They are not forests or grasslands, so policymakers need to understand the diversity of ecosystems that Europe has in order to legislate for them,” Seijo said.
InBestSoil will run until December 2026. By then, the team hopes to provide farmers, landowners and land managers across Europe with the tools they need to restore soil, and the economic rationale to do so.
This article was originally published in Horizon, EU Research and Innovation Magazine.
The project in this article was funded as part of the EU Mission: Soil Trade for Europe. EU missions are EU-funded initiatives that mobilize research, policy and the public to tackle major real-world challenges by 2030.
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