Brief me
- Soils host 59% of life on earth and delivers up to €11 trillion in ecosystem value every year!
- 95% of the world’s food is produced by soil and it supplies 98% of EU daily calories
- 62% of EU soils show signs of degradation and the full extent may be even worse
- The EU loses over 50 billion euros annually due to degradation - but restoring it could yield 6x the return!
- Europe paves over 800 km2 of soil every year - that’s 6 San Siro stadiums lost daily to urban expansion!
Globally soils store more carbon than all plants and the atmosphere - agricultural topsoils in the EU store 9.3 billion tonnes of organic carbon but they have lost almost 1% in the last decade!