Building a European network to advance soil health research, monitor soil health, and advocate for sustainable land use
The Soil Health and Food (SH&F) mission board has set the goal to have 75% of European soils healthy or significantly improved by 2030. This is in line with other important European initiatives such as the Green Deal and EU Farm-to-Fork Strategy, as well as with preparations for a new EU law on the protection of Soil Health that aims to protect soils on the same legal basis as air and water. Meanwhile, the private sector too, is proposing explicit visions of sustainable food systems, 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).
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 land uses across all EU member states.
To address these challenges, BENCHMARKS aims to build a European network dedicated to advancing soil research, monitoring soil health, and advocating for sustainable land use practices. It proposes co-development within 24 European Living Labs of a multi-scale and multi-user focused monitoring framework that is transparent, harmonised and cost-effective. Underpinned by the best scientific knowledge and technologies this framework provides a clear soil health index for benchmarking, using indicators that are pertinent to the objective of assessment, applicable to the land use and logistically feasible.
This Integrated Soil Monitoring Framework combines a newly developed logical sieve method (Zwetsloot et al., 2022) soil health indicator selection, with sample, space (earth observation technologies) and 3 stats (existing and derived data) collection methods.
Ersilia’s role:
Ersilia takes charge of the Communication, Dissemination, and Exploitation Plan, managing the project’s website and social media channels. Through these efforts, Ersilia promotes awareness and knowledge exchange to ensure the preservation of soil resources and the harmonisation of monitoring systems.
BENCHMARKS partners: The Soil Health BENCHMARKS project brings together a consortium of 29 partner organisations from across Europe, combining scientific expertise, applied practice, and policy engagement to advance harmonised soil health monitoring and research. The consortium includes major research universities and institutes such as Wageningen University & Research (the Netherlands), the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), the National Research Council’s ISAFOM (Italy), AgroParisTech and Université de Lorraine (France), the University of Coimbra (Portugal), and the Jozef Stefan Institute (Slovenia). It also involves key scientific and environmental organisations like ISRIC – World Soil Information (Netherlands), the Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke), the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research (NINA), Masaryk University’s RECETOX centre (Czech Republic), FiBL – Research Institute of Organic Agriculture (Switzerland), Earthwatch Europe (UK), and UNEP‑WCMC (UK). Additional partners include specialised research and application organisations such as Climate Farmers (Netherlands), CRISP – University of Napoli Federico II (Italy), Global Change Research Institute CAS (Czech Republic), Direção Regional de Agricultura e Pescas do Centro (Portugal), the Regeneration Academy (Spain), Grand Farm (Austria), and the Ersilia Foundation (Spain), among others. Together, these organisations contribute scientific research, practical testing, land stewardship insights, and cross‑sector engagement to develop an integrated soil health monitoring framework for Europe.
Keep updated at: soilhealthbenchmarks.eu