In 2021, the European Commission launched “A Soil Deal for Europe”, a mission in the context of the European Green Deal or transition toward carbon neutrality. Along with the EU Soil Strategy for 2030, the EU Soil Observatory, proposed Soil Health Law, and other policy instruments, the mission is designed to foster the development and introduction of sustainable land and soil management practices.
As part of the mission, cross-European consortia could apply for funding under the Horizon Europe program for research and innovation. One of the projects to receive funding is InBestSoil, which includes among its 19 partners Silava, the Latvian State Forest Research Institute.
LSM spoke to Dagnija Lazdiņa and Andis Lazdiņš, two researchers involved in the project's Latvian team, to learn about its activities and why soil health should be a shared concern.
In short, InBestSoil aims to establish an economic valuation system to consider soil health in a new light and enable it to be integrated into business models. In other words, the project is looking at soil health through the lens of business and management. The expected result is a framework to take into account in the management of agricultural and forest lands and when calculating income from the yield they provide.
Soil health is more than a matter of carbon
“In the last few years, everybody is talking and going crazy about carbon,” Lazdiņa points out, hinting at the many initiatives focused on measuring and reducing emissions, increasing removals, and carbon trading mechanisms.
“Our project is looking at how to manage soils. Of course, we're measuring carbon, but also analyzing DNA – what kind of biota the soils contain, the structure and density of the soil, and more. We're also thinking about the processes happening below ground and comparing different practices to calculate how much they cost. The aim is to look at aspects other than carbon in soil health management and to think about soil as a long-term investment,” Lazdiņa explains, adding that “when we do something wrong, it's very hard to fix. [Soil] is a huge, living system. If we easily see what happens above ground, it's much harder to see and understand what's happening below ground.”
“When the soil is alive, all these [eco]systems deliver good production above ground too. That's what we want to pay attention to – to calculate the monetary value, which is easier to understand for those persons who are not biologists, but are more practical; to prove that by doing not so much investment, we could get better results. When we're doing the best for the soil, it gives us the best in terms of yield,” she continues.
Depending on the season, InBestSoil involves five to seven Silava employees, as well as stakeholders whose day-to-day work revolves around soil management, such as farmers, foresters, consultants, soil preparation service providers, and non-governmental organizations. According to Lazdiņa, the stakeholders should have a financial interest in soil quality to make the most of their participation in the project because, fundamentally, it aims to raise awareness of the fact that healthy soil leads to good production in forests and agriculture.
However, importantly, soil health should be a consideration in its own right, and any management practices should be more than a formality, Lazdiņa believes. This will likely mean more than just keeping up with old amelioration systems and the way that soil has been prepared in the past. It will require a change in techniques.
Findings unique to each location make process more complex
As part of the project, the Silava researchers have established a sampling point and case study demo area at an old gravel mining site in Mežole where one side is still forested. The site illustrates that there is no “one-size-fits-all” solution for soil degradation, with each area requiring its own combination of approaches. For example, even within the site in Mežole, the team envisages different practices. It will recultivate the area once covered in gravel, hoping to amend the soil to foster the growth of a mix of deciduous trees and spruce. One step in the process will be helping the plants that would normally grow here to come in. Trefoil, for example, enriches the soil naturally without using fertilizers, Lazdiņa explains.
In another section, the experts used wood ash and added potassium to re-establish the right level of nutrients in the soil to improve its health and resilience against pests. They made several discoveries throughout the process that they will demonstrate to project partners and stakeholders, such as how the direction in which machines move during the soil preparation process makes a big difference to soil health in the long run.
“For example, when preparing soil in the forest, we should think about the direction in which water or wind erosion could move the soil. We could choose different methods to make furrows or mounds, how much to scarify and so on. All these things are related to the exchange of gasses in soil, which, later on, helps plants and animals live,” Lazdiņa explains.
The hope is that the findings from the InBestSoil project will become case studies or so-called “lighthouses” for use throughout Europe. Differences between countries are to be expected, and the framework will include the uniquenesses to keep in mind. “We shouldn't generalize! In Latvia, we have very different situations because of the micro terrains and history of soil development during the glacial period. We have different soil types, subtypes etc. This is also very interesting for our partners – that there can be such big differences within just a few hundred meters,” shares Lazdiņa.
Widespread issues in agricultural lands in Latvia are acidification and the loss of organic carbon due to a decrease in cattle, and cattle manure being substituted with man-made fertilizers. Another is the amelioration practices being carried out over the last 50-60 years. The ecosystem changes with such drainage practices as they alter the oxygen content in the soil, therefore reducing the biodiversity within it, Lazdiņa explains.
For anyone wondering why these areas cannot be left to their own devices to recover, Lazdiņš advises that agricultural landscapes are artificial landscapes by default. “We should reforest everything if we want a natural landscape around,” he states rhetorically.
In forests, the problems differ, one being that they grow for a long time, therefore accumulating a lot of carbon in the soil. While the trees may be chopped down, the soil remains, so an accumulation of nutrients has been observed at some forest sites. Due to these accumulations, they are becoming more fertile.
In any case, any activities to restore the soil's health will cost something. InBestSoil aims to find the sweet spot between cost and return on investment.
Who should be paying for ecosystem services?
Lazdiņa dreams that one day organizations will be paid for the ecosystem services they deliver. “I wouldn't say compensated but paid. Not compensated for doing nothing but paid for doing something,” she specifies. This would mean, for example, that a company could produce timber, grain, and ecosystem services and receive payment for all of them, because “if it's a product and if it's in demand, somebody should pay for it,” Lazdiņa adds. So the company would derive value not just from the product that the soil produces, but also the quality of the soil itself.
“I would use another word instead of “paid”,” Lazdiņš comments. “They should be sellable. Somebody should want to buy them. If nobody wants to buy them, then they don't have value. It should be personal – not just that the whole public is paying for something that we don't understand,” he continues.
Lazdiņš is alarmed at the amount of discussions going on about and money being channeled into carbon and soil credit systems and related activities when there is so much uncertainty involved. “If I were a bank owner, it would be a very high risk business to invest in such activity like the reverting of wetland because it's very uncertain whether this will be positive or negative and to what extent,” he says.
“Soil is complicated in terms of value – the only real value is what we can grow there and if we can grow it sustainably. If, in 10-20 years the soil is depleted, this is bad management. If the soil is producing for decades, without the continuous increase of fertilizer and chemical use, the practice is good,” Lazdiņš concludes, pointing out the essence of the InBestSoil project – identifying better ways to manage soil to get the most value out of it.
Taking care of soil health at a layman's level
What can the average human do to maintain or improve soil quality? One step is to avoid compacting the soil. “We need the porousness to have oxygen in the soil. As you prepare the soil, think about leeching or the organic material washing out. When we have oxygen in the soil, we have a lot of living organisms that give back nutrients. Bacteria and other organisms, for example, can split large molecules into smaller ones, making them available for plants as a nutrient,” advises Lazdiņa, adding that soil should also be covered to avoid winter erosion.
Additionally, she advises exercising caution when using fertilizers. “Having too much can be worse than having a little. And that applies in general, not just to soil. If the plants don't use it all, the leftovers leech into the groundwaters, ditches, rivers and so on,” Lazdiņa notes.
“If we're taking something from the soil, we should be giving it back. In the forest we do this with wood ash – we take branches, tops, and forest slash, use it for energy and get wood ash that we put back. Historically, they were burnt on site. We moved them away for energy production,” she continues, explaining that such practices have existed in the past but today's reality requires modifying the techniques.
Lazdiņš adds: “In agricultural lands we should consider the rotation of plants so that we not only avoid diseases but also produce organic carbon to substitute the carbon, which is lost from the soil due to the mineralization of organic matter.”
“Regarding manure and other organic wastes, one thing is safety. For instance, in the case of wastewater sludge, we should consider that it is not always a good solution to use in areas where we produce food, at least in the same year,” he finishes.
Soil monitoring in Latvia is project-based
Several short-term initiatives in Latvia have considered soil health. For example, Silava is also involved in BIOservicES, another Horizon 2020 project, aiming to explore the relationship between soil organisms and the provision of soil ecosystem functions and services across different land uses. From 2021 to 2024, E2SOILAGRI, a project funded by the Norway Grants scheme, considered how to enhance sustainable soil resource management and improve national soil data. Silava was involved with monitoring carbon in agricultural soils. Earlier, from 2013 to 2015, the University of Latvia, and Daugavpils University carried out a European Social Fund project to establish an interdisciplinary group of scientists to research soil health, and these are just three examples.
According to Lazdiņš, the problem with project-based funding is that you never know how long each project will last. InBestSoil hopes to create a widely applicable framework for use after the project has concluded.
