Originally posted on: 4th December 2015, Grantham Institute 

As we mark World Soil Day, and with COP21 well into its first week, Dr Katrin Glatzel of Agriculture for Impacttakes a look at how good soil and land management practices can help us achieve important climate and development goals.  

Soil matters. The decision made at the Rio+20 conference to develop a set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the agreement ‘to strive to achieve a land degradation neutral world in the context of sustainable development’ gave momentum to discussions on the role of soils in the global sustainable development agenda. This is now, at least partially, reflected and anchored in SDG goal #15, ‘Sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, halt and reverse land degradation, halt biodiversity loss.’

In addition to this, earlier this year the French Government launched its “4 per 1000” initiative, aimed at making…

One of the buildings often found next to a Roman forum is the basilica. It served as a place where people could meet. Basilicas had no statues of Roman gods and had beautiful light that came in through windows near the roof, so they were a favorite gathering place for early Christians.

The plan of the basilica was later adopted for the construction of important churches. Lisbon has an elegant basilica at Estrela, built in 1790 by Queen  Maria I.

Few people seem to know that one can climb the stairs to the roof of the Estrela basilica and enjoy in peaceful silence breathtaking views of the city. It is a perfect place to meet Lisbon.

Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Agriculture, being a significant contributor to climate change, will no doubt be on the agenda at COP21 discussions being held in Paris at the moment. Despite being a noted omission from UNFCCC negotiations to date, it is a sector which can’t be ignored if we are to halt climate change. Recent research found that while emissions from Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Uses (AFOLU) were dropping in terms of their contribution to overall emissions (29% of man-made emissions in the 1990s to 21% in 2010), emissions from agriculture are growing at around 1% per year. Yet there is a lack of public awareness of the magnitude of greenhouse gas emissions from farming. In a global survey by Chatham House less than a third of people surveyed thought that meat and dairy production significantly contributed to climate change, despite it having a larger carbon footprint than the…

Today I am spending a rainy day planning next years kitchen garden. An important thing to remember when planning your vegetable garden is to ensure you practice good crop rotation. Why is that? If you rotate your crops you will help to prevent the spread of diseases and insect problems.

If you have ever grown potatoes in a new garden that used to be in sod the previous year, you may have had an issue with wireworms.  I did when I planted the first community garden bed with potatoes. I harvested the first potatoes with no issues and thought I would leave the potatoes in the soil to harvest in late July.

Wasn’t I surprised to see this on my freshly harvested potatoes that summer. Ugh, I didn’t want to look at a potato after that. I had to toss all the damaged potatoes away.  The next year I grew…