Study identifies key agricultural practices that threaten soil health and global food supply

The global food system faces growing risks, as modern agricultural practices undermine the resilience of the world’s soil, according to new research.

Soil resilience is the soil’s ability to resist, adapt and recover from disturbances, ranging from daily management practices to more serious shocks such as extreme weather events. A major examination of agricultural practices concluded that if intensive techniques such as plowing, the use of fertilizers and irrigation increase the yields of short -term crops, their regular use in the longer term can degrade soil, leaving them less able to resist shocks such as drought, floods or geopolitical disturbances.

Research is published in the journal NPJ Sustainable Agriculture.

The soils, which underlie 95% of global food production and hold more carbon than world forests, are regularly weakened by practices that deploy organic matter, compact the soil and disrupt ecosystems within it. Over time, this reduces their resilience and triggers high erosion cycles, salinization, outbreaks of pests and lower yields.

The study classified the greatest threats to soil resilience. The top of the list is a high erosion caused by overgrazing, overgrazing and deforestation – a process which can permanently exceed fertile soil which takes centuries to form. The salinization of irrigated agricultural land, contamination of pesticides and plastic residues, contamination of pesticides and plastic residues, intensive farming.

Dr. Alison Carswell of Rothamsted, the main author of the study, said: “healthy and resilient soils are not only the basis of food security, they are at the heart of biodiversity and climate stability. However, many practices on which we are counting to increase yields may today undermine this foundation in the future.”

The examination notes that certain practices, such as the flooding of rice fields or acidic limitation soils, can maintain long -term soil resilience. And alternatives – from the work of the floor of the conservation to the integrated management of pests – can slow or even reversed damage. But most solutions bear compromises, requiring careful short -term productivity balancing with long -term resilience.

The authors warn that ignorance of soil resilience could leave agricultural systems that are increasingly vulnerable to shift points, where the sudden collapse of productivity becomes irreversible. Such failures, they argue, could strive by food and commercial networks, threatening global stability.

The results intervene in the middle of the growing concern that the world loses a healthy soil faster than it can be reconstructed, the UN believing that a third of the soil is already degraded. As the demand for food increases, in particular in sub-Saharan Africa, South America and Southeast Asia, the risks can intensify.

“The rupture of the soil degradation cycle is possible,” concludes Dr. Carswell, “but that requires rethinking the way we manage land – not just for returns next season, but for resilience in the decades to come.”