Introduction
Soil is often overlooked despite being a crucial component of nature. Increasingly urbanised populations often see it just as ‘dirt’ and as an unlimited natural resource, unaware of its relevance in their daily lives and of its key role in a sustainable and circular bioeconomy (European Commission, Directorate-General for Environment 2021b). This lack of understanding and appreciation of soils results in a lack of investment and a general political reluctance to pass laws to preserve and enhance soil health (EU Soil Observatory (EUSO) 2024). Ultimately, this translates into a lack of emphasis in education on the importance of soil and highlights the need to increase public awareness and societal engagement.
The EU Mission 'A Soil Deal for Europe' (Mission Soil) is one of five Missions funded under the EU Research and Innovation (R&I) Programme Horizon Europe. Its goal is to create 100 Living Labs and Lighthouses by 2030 to promote sustainable land and soil management in urban and rural areas. The success of the Soil Mission depends on action being taken by society. However, the current lack of soil literacy is a major barrier to achieve significant soil health improvements. Therefore, all stakeholders must have access to both general education on soil and targeted training for specialised needs (European Commission, Directorate-General for Environment 2021b). However, scientific information about soils is not enough to trigger citizin action and involvement. Connecting soil literacy to people's values, interests, and concerns is key. While some messages may be widely attractive (e.g., healthy soils underpinning achievement of physical and mental health, beautiful and healthy landscapes, good quality food), soil literacy should also be linked with specific and locally relevant concerns and should empower citizens to make a change (European Commission, Directorate-General for Environment 2021a).
Despite its importance, little prior work considers the conceptualisation and measurement of soil literacy, as well as its constituent components of attitudes, behaviours and competences, which allow decision-making to enable soil health and positive impacts on the environment. Understanding the attitudes, behaviours and competencies that drive individual interactions with soil, including factors that promote or harm soil health, is crucial to inform policy responses that aim at facilitating sustainable interactions with soil of the future citizens and farming communities (Johnson et al. 2023).
Soil literacy in the context of the Soil Mission
The goal of the Soil Mission is to create 100 living labs and lighthouses to lead the transition towards healthy soils by 2030. The Mission’s goal is underpinned by eight specific objectives, and each of those has various policy targets. The policy targets for the “Increasing soil literacy in society across Member States” objective are:
T. 8.1: Awareness of the societal role and value of soil is increased amongst EU citizens, including in key stakeholder groups, and policymakers.
T. 8.2: Soil health is firmly embedded in schools and educational curricula, to enable citizens’ behavioural change towards the adoption of sustainable practices both individually and collectively.
T 8.3: Citizen involvement in soil and land-related issues is improved at all levels
T 8.4: Practitioners and stakeholders have access to appropriate information and training to improve skills and to support the adoption of sustainable land management practices.
Soil literacy is also heavily linked to one of the four Soil Mission transversal-operational objectives: “Engage with the soil user community and society at large". The activities included in this operational objective are:
Activity 4.1: Foster soil education across society
Activity 4.2: Engage with and activate municipalities and regions to design their own strategies and actions for the protection of soil health
Activity 4.3: Engage with the private sector and consumers to embed soil health in business practices
Activity 4.4: Strengthen soil health advice and improve access to training for practitioners in line with Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation Systems (AKIS)
Activity 4.5: Create citizen-led soil stewardship
Activity 4.6: Bring soil closer to citizens’ values
State-of-the-Art
Defining what is soil is a complex matter. Within soil science, these definitions have changed over time. Beyond soil sciences, different groups have different understandings of what soils are. The way in which soils are known, represented, and understood is diverse. In different regions, farmers, foresters, government officials, soil researchers, or environmental NGOs know soil in different ways, and attach different meanings to them (Granjou and Meulemans 2023).
There is also the historic context of how soil science has emerged and developed as a topic seeking relevance within the scientific community and governance spheres over the past one hundred years, which adds another level of complexity to the discussion. Accounts of the history of soil science usually locate the origins of the discipline in the late 1800 with Vasiliy Dokuchaev (Rusakova et al. 2022). Before the 1970’s soil knowledge was mainly related to agricultural practices, as technologies started developing (e.g., mechanization, chemicals, modified plant crops, namely the "first green revolution" Melillo 2012), there was a shift in this concept. Because of this, soil science entered a period of rethinking its self-understanding often described as a legitimation crisis. Since then, soil science has re-articulated its relevance in 5 different epistemic commitments along the years (Sigl et al. 2023):
1: communicating to policymakers, to find new ways of communicating existing soil science knowledge to policymakers.
2: internationalising soil science knowledge , to create international bodies of soil science knowledge with a broad geographical scope.
3: rethinking soil science research by using boundary concepts, soil scientists started using concepts like ecosystem services, policy cycle, or soil health to improve communication, interaction, and collaboration beyond traditional soil science (creation of soil ecology).
4: the ecosystem approach in soil-related research, an approach that studies soils as part of broader ecosystems with the aim to understand interactions within and beyond soils.
5: developing regional scenarios for (agricultural) soil management, the goal is to use soil management as a means to tackle societal and environmental problems without losing sight of other soil functions, such as local food production or regional economic functions.
By soil literacy the EU Soil Mission recognises both a popular awareness about the importance of soil, as well as specialised and practice-oriented knowledge related to achieving soil health (European Commission, Directorate-General for Environment 2021a) . By doing so, the Soil Mission seeks to establish a strong link between soil literacy and soil health. But the main problem is: The lack of a consistent understanding of what soil is leads to complexities in defining soil health, which in turn influences the development of a concept for soil literacy.
The term soil health stands as a broader meaning and should be considered as an ‘umbrella’ term incorporating many different dimensions beyond ecosystem services and human health. According to the proposal for a Soil Monitoring and Resilience directive, soil health means the physical, chemical and biological condition of the soil determining its capacity to function as a vital living system and to provide ecosystem servicesn (European Commission, Directorate-General for Environment 2023). This definition only relates to the functional part of the soils, and obscures the different understandings and contexts that offer the great diversity of what soil health may be. The definition needs to considers how it relates to different SDGs and other environmental and socio-economic factors. In that sense, the soil literacy Think Tank believes that there is a need to expand the soil health concept beyond the anthropocentric idea related to ecosystem services and the view of soil as a resource humans can benefit from. For example, ‘Soil health means the physical, chemical and biological condition of the soil determining its capacity to function as a vital living system and to provide ecosystem services under different environmental and socio-economic driving forces…..’ This paradigm shift would involve moving from a purely anthropocentric utilitarian approach to valuing, to an ecocentric deontological one, which attributes inherent value to all soils.
As mentioned before, soil science has moved from a very local and regional perspective in which the main target of soil literacy were farmers and landowners, to a more global perspective that tries to tackle several environmental and societal challenges, and where it deals with different target audiences. Until relatively recently, there has been a linear process between researchers/policymakers/public, in which the sciences are seen as the source of knowledge about the soil which needs to be acted on by others, such as policymakers or farmers. The linear model assumes that the main group with knowledge on how soils should be managed are the scientists. However, awareness of the value or importance of soil already exists amongst other different target groups, who observe soil and land degradation taking place. Therefore, a change in the target audience results in a change on how to go about soil literacy.
From all of this, we can conclude that there is not a singular soil health idea to transfer in soil literacy. But rather, due to the different viewpoints and management priorities of the target audience, there needs to be an adaptive approach to soil literacy, respectful of multiple perspectives and sources of knowledge. For instance, soil literacy for a farmer might be more practical with strong relational values, for people living in metropolitan areas, soil literacy might be linked to urban sustainability practices.
The lack of soil literacy might not only be limited to citizens, youth, or farmers, but also extend to policymakers or planners for example. The Think Tank’s preliminary desk research did not yield many results related to studies on the current status of soil literacy, or linked topics such as soil awareness raising, in Europe. This can already indicate that further research in the field is needed. Nevertheless, it is worth mentioning the work already done by soil networks like the Global and European Soil Partnerships on soil awareness and capacity building, including their collection of educational materials and the events they organise. Similarly, European projects such as LOESS, HuMUS, PREPSOIL, ECHO and NBSOIL and their work in collecting the best policies and practices around soil health, trainings and courses are also relevant to building the basis of knowledge around soil literacy, as relevant are the outcomes of over 20 projects under the EU LIFE programme between 2012 and 2019, see LIFE Soil Ex-Post Study - Final Report (Giandrini 2023).
Case studies outside of Europe may also serve as examples of soil literacy assessment. For example, a study conducted a soil literacy survey (Johnson et al. 2023) among a population of 3661 school children aged between 13-15 years in three African countries, Ghana, South Africa and Zimbabwe to measure their ‘Attitudes, Behaviours and Competencies’ of soil, which they termed ‘ABC’. The survey showed that although students were generally equipped with a good attitude to (overall 52% positive) and behaviour towards soil (overall 60% engagement), they had little competency as to how to improve soil health (overall 23% knowledge). For example, less than 35% of respondents across all countries knew that soil is living. And less than 13% of students were aware of the important role of soil in climate change mitigation.
The study is supported by The ABC of Soil Literacy Report from the University of Durham (Johnson et al. 2020). The report defines soil literacy as a combination of attitudes, behaviours and competencies required to make sound decisions that promote soil health and ultimately contribute to the maintenance and enhancement of the natural environment . It also offers approaches to measure its levels, focused in this case in the school children of the three African countries, through their soil literacy toolkit, which includes a survey questionnaire, guidance on how to select samples of the target population, and advice on preparing fieldwork teams.
Preliminary recommendations for soil literacy
Soil literacy should seek to create a new form of moral agency (concern for soil or soil stewardship) which would foster voluntary action (care for soil) and the implementation of mandatory and clear measures to secure soils (soil protection). A promising pathway for this is through linking responsibility for soils with already articulated governance objectives, such as reducing carbon emissions, ensuring food security, securing a functional environment or land take limitation (Krzywoszynska 2023). Taking a systemic and holistic approach to soils ensures a robust soil literacy by acknowledging the interrelation between soil and other crucial areas such as water management, circular economy, biodiversity, and human and environmental health. For instance, the One Health concept can be instrumental in establishing a connection between soil health and human health.
We need to understand that a certain level of soil knowledge already exists, although this is very unequal among the different target groups and decision makers whose actions have direct or indirect impacts on soil health. Soil literacy should build upon this pre-existing knowledge and values around soils and find ways to build on actions which can lead to “healthy soils” in a just and equitable manner. In this sense, a care network model can play a key role, in which an initial attentiveness to one aspect of soils leads to a further attentiveness to other interconnected aspects. For example, farmers’ attentiveness to soil structure can lead to an attentiveness to soil biota, and result in changes to land management practices so that the needs of soil biota are respected. Attentiveness can thus have a transformative effect on human-soil relations, leading, for example, to a questioning of models of land use which neglect the needs of soil organisms (Krzywoszynska 2023).
Linked to the previous paragraph, in terms of engagement, the Fifth National Climate Assessment - the US Government’s pre-eminent report on climate change impacts, risks, and responses - indicates a series of processes and actions to improve the effectiveness of engagement efforts and accessibility to climate information (Marino 2023). These can also be applied to soil literacy:
Co-produced or co-created research is a promising approach for soil literacy as well. This type of research defines non-scientific individuals as experts within their specific context, integrating community-based and scientific insights and solutions. However, integration can fail if power dynamics, goals, trust, and compensation within research teams and epistemologies are not equitable.
Establishing clear, measurable objectives with well-defined benchmarks or desired outcomes leads to more effective communication products and processes; bringing key stakeholders into the process at this early stage can improve effectiveness.
To inform real-world decision-making, information needs to be calibrated to the needs of target audiences; importantly, communicating relevant information sometimes involves translating science into accessible and actionable language, whereas in other cases it involves incorporating diverse forms of knowledge into communications products and efforts.
Efforts that have been successful in engaging people on climate change across existing ideological and cultural divides generally do so by addressing the things people care about most (this links to the care network model mentioned in previous paragraph).
Including intended target audiences throughout the process of developing communication products both promotes procedural justice and increases the likelihood that such efforts meet shared goals
Engagement outcomes also strongly reflect the relationships and levels of trust between intended audiences and messengers. The use of trusted messengers increases acceptance and use of climate change risk information.
Pervasive uncertainty surrounding climate change continues to be a major challenge to communication (in our case soil health).
Finally, soil literacy should be addressed/considered at multiple scales and differentiate between sectors, disciplines, priorities, and age groups. One example of how this could be accomplished comes from the concept of 'Learning for Sustainability (LfS)' education or Education for Sustainability (ESD). The work is based on the green competence framework from the JRC’s GreenComp document (Bianchi et al. 2022). The JRC defines 12 broad competence areas clustered on different knowledge, skills and attitude levels. Merging both competence frameworks with the European Green Deal (e.g., Farm to fork strategies), different competence areas were developed, starting from a primitive level of knowledge, skills, and attitudes to more advanced concepts.
If some competence areas can be delineated, a target audience could then be segmented by age, interest, educational background, roles and values e.g., kindergarten, schools, youth (university, experts) or public officers. The levels can go from basic, students from 3-6 years, to more advanced progressive knowledge and skills over the years. The focus would be on creating competence-based and not just content-based curricula and training programmes following a progressive multi-level approach. Nevertheless, besides this medium- to long-term set of goals, there is currently the urge to foster and promote soil literacy among policymakers and stakeholders whose decisions and actions have already had a negative impact on soil health across multiple scales of land planning and governance.
Achieving soil health depends on the context and needs of the actors involved. There is not “one state” of soil health knowledge that we can achieve, but there is a common basic knowledge that can be shared. Taking the approach of centering on this competences system is a more promising way.