Functional Soil Planning: Managing Soil Ecosystem Services for Sustainable Food Production.

Sustainable Food Security is at the top of the current policy agenda. While we have the technological capability to achieve either food security or sustainability, the real challenge is simultaneously increasing food production without increasing pressures on the environment. Key to this is maximising the suite of ecosystem services (or: soil functions) that agricultural soils perform: food production, water purification, carbon-sequestration, nutrient cycling and providing a habitat for biodiversity. Whilst all soils are capable of performing all functions simultaneously, the relative capacity to deliver these functions depends upon soil type and land use.

Functional soil planning is a concept in which the supply and demand for the soil functions are matched at local, national and international level, by managing soils and land use to perform those functions ‘that they are good at’. We will introduce the SQUARE project which is assessing soil functional capacity across 160 contrasting sites in Ireland.