The land cultivated in Spain reaches 17 million hectares in Spain -173 million in the European Union-, a vital area for the agricultural sector that takes advantage of World Soil Day, to remember that it is its fundamental element of production and that they work in your care and improvement.
With the slogan “Let’s keep the soil alive, let’s protect soil biodiversity,” this Saturday a day designated by FAO “to focus attention on the importance of healthy soil and advocate for the sustainable management” of its resources is held.
This year, FAO focuses on the capacity of soil biodiversity as a “natural solution to many of the challenges facing humanity, from food production to water storage”, an approach that is already taken by different administrations and agri-food organizations and entities.
In the case of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), its future programming is part of the European Green Agreement strategy, in which soils “play a fundamental role in achieving the objective of a climate-neutral European Union (EU) for 2050 ”and the“ Farm to Table ”strategy.
This is assured by community sources, who also recall that their policies include, for example, “the reduction of 50% in the use of chemical pesticides by 2030 and 20% in that of fertilizers, return at least 10% of the agricultural area to the characteristics of landscapes of high diversity and that 25% of agricultural land in the EU is cultivated organically. ‘
LIKE FARMERS AND LIVESTOCKERS REITERATE, WITHOUT THE LAND THEY WOULDN’T EXIST, BUT WITHOUT THEM THE LAND AND THE TERRITORY WOULD NOT KEEP ALIVE
According to their data, soil degradation – in addition to erosion, desertification or pollution – is also produced by “unbalanced fertilization, the excessive use of groundwater for irrigation, the improper use of pesticides, the employment heavy machinery or overgrazing. ‘
In this sense, conservation agriculture appears as one of the tools of the sector to combat the loss and degradation of the soil and whose three principles are the suppression of tillage, the presence of a vegetal cover and the rotation of crops.
The Spanish Association of Living Soils Conservation Agriculture (AEAC-SV) and the agrarian organization UPA, both participants in the Mosoex Operational Group, work to “analyze and identify the best practices to improve the state of agricultural soils” by increasing the content of organic matter.
There are countless projects from all agri-food sectors focused on this objective, such as the «WeLaser», in which the agrarian organization participates COAG and looking to replace weed chemicals using a high powered laser source.
Or the one developed by Tebrio, a biotechnology company that has developed an organic fertilizer from insects, which they claim increases crop yield and improves the soil, by accelerating “the exchange of available nutrients.”
The agrarian organization ASAJA He asks Efeagro «Can you imagine a world without water or air, or that they were contaminated? Nobody can imagine that our world worked with these natural resources compromised or in precarious conditions, that is why it is increasingly supported by governments and institutions.
And he responds that, for this reason, they defend “the same treatment for another natural resource no less important, the soil” and the need to “protect the soil to avoid its loss” and that it is in optimal conditions, because if not “its productivity will It will be compromised and the diet of the population could be in danger ».
As farmers and ranchers reiterate, without the land they would not exist, but without them the land and the territory would not remain alive.
(Text: Laura Cristóbal / Efeagro)
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