Feed the Future Newsletter, Issue 135, May 2024

Ninety-five percent of our food comes from soils, making healthy soil crucial to achieving global food security. One of the biggest issues, especially in Africa where soil health is still declining, is that farmers have relied on the same soil for decades to produce crops with limited return of nutrients and carbon back into the soil. Insufficient erosion control, improper fertilizer use, over tilling, growing the same crop year after year, and other unsustainable production practices have created unhealthy soils. This means that farmers require more land to produce less food, the crops that they produce are less profitable, and they are more prone to fail due to climate extremes.

To address these issues and more, the recent Africa Fertilizer and Soil Health Summit brought together African leaders and international partners to support African-led concrete steps to guide African nations, farmers, the global fertilizer industry, and development partners in supporting a vision for a food-secure, climate-resilient, environmentally sustainable and prosperous Africa that is not only feeding itself but helping to feed the world. Read more in this month’s issue.