Article by Marcelo Galdos, Program Innovation Lead, Agreena

As 2030 draws ever closer, the world finds itself at a critical moment. The 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were created under the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development to confront the most pressing issues facing humanity and the world. But the goals highlight just how deeply interconnected our global challenges are, from food insecurity and poverty to climate change, biodiversity loss and human health. Tackling these issues in isolation is no longer a viable option. What’s needed are integrated, holistic solutions that generate real benefits for people, nature and the economy.

One of the most powerful - and underleveraged - tools to do so lies beneath our feet: soil.

Regenerative agriculture – farming practices that restore and enhance soil health – is emerging not just as a climate solution but as a systems solution, with growing evidence linking soil restoration to progress across the SDG agenda. By shifting how we value and manage soil, we create a domino effect of positive change. The key is recognising soil not just as a substrate for crops, but as a vital, living ecosystem - the foundation of our food, water, health and climate.

Investing in regenerative practices isn’t just a bet on sustainable farming, it’s a foundational strategy for sustainable development at scale.

How soil regeneration contributes to the SDG agenda

‘Soil’ isn’t overtly mentioned as a key goal in the SDGs. However, one of the most explicit mentions of soil comes under SDG 15 ‘Life on Land’, where one of goal’s targets is “to combat desertification, restore degraded land and soil, including land affected by desertification, drought and floods, and strive to achieve a land degradation-neutral world”. What’s telling is that achieving this goal can in fact directly and indirectly help meet most of the other SDGs too.

Healthy soils of course impact the quality of the food we can grow and eat. But the effects of the climate crisis and human activities like poor land management are degrading soil - currently, and shockingly, a third of the world's soil has already been degraded. This poses a major threat to building and achieving food security, which in itself,    underscores a host of the SDGs like 1 ‘No Poverty’, 2 ‘Zero Hunger’, 3 ‘Good Health and Wellbeing’, and 12 ‘Responsible Consumption and Production’.

The correlation between soil health and human health/wellbeing seems obvious. But the many links between the two are often misunderstood, underestimated or, above all, largely unknown. Healthy soils provide the provision for food and supporting biodiversity, but they also directly impact the quality of air (SDGs 3, 13) and water (3, 6, 13) - fertile soils act as natural filters for nutrients and contaminants and can detoxify and recycle wastes, with strong soil structures able to prevent flooding too. More broadly, soils help provide the provision of raw materials, wood and support needed for human infrastructure. And even more broadly, they underscore social aspects like human recreation (hiking, sport, mental wellbeing) and many cultural identities. These all feed into more indirect goals like 11 ‘Sustainable Cities and Communities’.

Less obvious and well-known - but imperatively important - is soil’s ability to sequester carbon: it is the largest terrestrial carbon sink. Studies have shown it has the potential to remove up to 5 gigatons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere on a global scale every year. This means it offers huge untapped potential for SDG 13 ‘Taking Climate Action’ and thereby tackling most of the SDGs - but soils are only good carbon sinks when they are healthy and fertile.

The connections go on and on. The point is that soil underpins entire ecosystems, food networks, biodiversity and human communities that are all integral to sustainable development. Amplifying an understanding and awareness of its importance in all of these areas is paramount to incentivising action and encouraging people to invest in regenerative soil practices.

What will it take to scale regenerative agriculture

To cultivate healthy soils that can truly make an impact on the UN SDGs, regenerative agriculture has to take place on a massive scale. Creating this scale of change depends on everything from capital and supportive policy to market incentives and farmer adoption. But there’s an important caveat. Yes, the benefits of transitioning to regenerative agriculture will give farmers better crop yields and financial security over the longer term; but in the short term, the transition involves a risky financial shortfall. 

Plugging this gap relies on initiatives like carbon credit schemes, where corporations buy credits to offset their emissions. These carbon offsets are complemented by carbon in setting, where agrifood players invest directly in carbon reduction and removal initiatives within their own supply chains.  Together, these soil carbon credits provide farmers with the vital extra revenue stream to make the transition to regenerative agriculture practices. In turn, the soil not only sequesters more carbon but also enhances biodiversity, water retention and many other benefits tied to the SDGs. The challenge is convincing organisations to invest in these schemes.

What it comes down to is trust - and trust comes from evidence. Can we prove that regenerative practices, both on a micro and macro scale, across one field and across millions (and eventually billions) of hectares of fields, have improved soil health and thereby contributed to a greater removal of carbon from the atmosphere?

Clearly, given the overwhelming scale and complexity of the task, to truly make regenerative agriculture measurable, investable and scalable, we can’t solely use manual processes. The notion of visiting every single field, documenting farming practices, taking numerous soil samples per field and then performing this several times a year is not viable, operationally, financially and so forth. Moreover, regenerative agriculture is not a blanket solution. Upscaling requires accounting for local and regional variables in soil, climate, policy, economics and culture too.

But we live in an age of digital innovation, and AI-powered digital measuring, reporting and verifying (dMRV) technologies are delivering groundbreaking advances in performing accurate MRV on both a context-specific and wide scale. The latest approaches merge satellite imagery with AI models to provide a precise picture of key metrics like soil structure across vast swathes of ground. The use of ground-truth, physical data like soil samples is then used to train and improve the models over time.

What are the benefits of using this approach? Well, for one, it reduces costs while increasing scalability. This is crucial not only for improving efficiency but incentivising uptake on a grander scale: more farms enrolled, fewer samples, same scientific integrity. Crucially, there is evidence - and that means more investment, more awareness and greater action.

Healthy soils lie at the heart of the UN’s 17 SDGs. Their importance cannot be underestimated in helping to achieve these ambitious but very attainable goals. This fragile layer of soil lying beneath our feet has an integral role to play in food security, climate change and the future health of all living things.