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Launch of Europe-wide research project on soil health

A group of people on a terrace

The partners of the BENCHMARKS project at the project launch meeting in Wageningen, the Netherlands. (Photo: Wageningen University)

[Translate to English:] Logo BENCHMARKS

In mid-February, the transdisciplinary project BENCHMARKS was launched at Wageningen University. The 5-year research project focuses on monitoring soil health across Europe. FiBL Switzerland is one of the 29 partner organisations from across Europe. The European Commission, the Joint Research Centre and representatives of the business and land management sectors are also involved.

A joint assessment undertaken by the Soil Health and Food (SH&F) mission board and the Joint Research Centre (JRC) states that 60 to 70 % of soils in Europe are currently considered unhealthy due to e.g. pollution, excess nutrients, compaction and soil degradation (A Soil Deal for Europe, European Commission, 2022a).

The European Commission SH&F mission has set the goal to have 75 % of European soils healthy or significantly improved by 2030, in line with a new EU law on the protection of soil health. The private sector is proposing explicit visions of sustainable food systems too, such as the 1000 landscapes for 1 billion people (1000 landscapes, 2022), the 100-million farmers platform of the World Economic Forum (World Economic Forum, 2022) and the Regen10 initiative of the World Business Council on Sustainable Development (WBCSD, 2022).

What is BENCHMARKS’s contribution?

Measuring the success of these public and private initiatives through the harmonised monitoring of European soils is an essential, but enormously complex task. It requires coherent yet context-specific monitoring on multiple scales, for multiple types of land use and across all European countries. BENCHMARKS will work together with stakeholders (farmers, foresters, urban planners, value chain representatives, researchers, local governance and policy makers) from across 24 contrasting landscapes to define how to monitor soil health across Europe, while also considering the local context of land management.

The goals of the BENCHMARKS project are to

  1. Provide a clear, easy-to-use tool for evaluating soil health, that is transparent, harmonized, and cost-effective.
  2. Define appropriate indicators that are relevant to the assessment of soil health for a range of land uses and climatic zones across Europe.
  3. Develop a soil health dashboard appropriate for use at a range of scales (field to European) for agricultural, forestry and urban settings.
  4. Contribute to improving existing European policies and regulations related to soil health.

Further information

Contact

Else Bünemann-König

Links

BENCHMARKS receives €12m in funding from the European Commission, as part of the Horizon Europe Call HORIZON-MISS-2021-SOIL-02-02 to "validate and further develop indicators for soil health and functions". BENCHMARKS is a consortium of 29 partner organisations from 10 EU countries plus Norway, Switzerland and the UK. These include universities, institutes of applied research, small and medium enterprises and local governmental organisations. The project is coordinated by Prof. Rachel Creamer at Wageningen University.