Soil degradation is getting worse across much of the world while the practices known to stop it are still not being taken up at the pace needed, according to a global assessment launched by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) at the UN desertification conference in Ulaanbaatar.

The Status of the World's Soil Resources 2026 draws on scientific literature published between 2015 and 2025 and on expertise from 75 countries, updating the assessment FAO first published in 2015 through the Global Soil Partnership. Its central finding is a gap between knowledge and practice: more than half of the regional and subregional assessments reviewed report low or very low adoption of sustainable soil management, 58 percent report a deteriorating trend since 2015, and only around 10 percent report improvement.

"We have much better evidence today about the pressures facing the world's soils — and about the practices that can protect and restore them. But this report makes clear that proven solutions are still not being adopted at the pace and scale required," said FAO Deputy Director-General Beth Bechdol. "The priority now is to give countries, farmers and other land users the knowledge, capacity and incentives they need to put those solutions into practice."

The practices in question are not experimental. Reduced tillage, integrated nutrient management, crop diversification, cover crops, organic amendments and agroforestry can all ease pressure on soils while holding or improving yields. The problem is scale.

Erosion emerges as the most severe and most interconnected threat. Across the seven regions assessed, 81 percent of assessments judge erosion management to be poor or very poor, and 65 percent report a deteriorating trend since 2015. Nutrient management splits by region: some areas carry surpluses from excessive inputs while others face depletion that holds back yields and food security, which is why the report insists on locally adapted approaches rather than a single prescription.

The pressures have grown. Since 2015 the global population has risen by 800 million and the harvested area of major crops has expanded by 80 million hectares, while urbanisation, unsustainable farming, industry, conflict and pollution all push soil functions down. Soils produce more than 95 percent of the food people eat, and also store and filter water, regulate climate and support biodiversity.

The report sets five priorities: stronger soil governance and legal frameworks; education, capacity development and knowledge exchange; better monitoring through harmonised data, indicators and methods; stronger incentives for adopting sustainable soil management; and inclusive, multidisciplinary decision-making. Its blunt request to decision-makers is to treat healthy soils as strategic assets.

A second publication launched the same day, Living Soils, Productive Lands, Resilient Landscapes, was developed jointly with the UN Convention to Combat Desertification. It puts agricultural land at the centre of land degradation neutrality — addressing a long-standing gap, since farmland accounts for most human-induced degradation yet has been underrepresented in restoration planning — and pushes for integrated management of productive landscapes rather than isolated restoration projects.

Source: FAO Newsroom