Five ways innovators are making farming easier on the planet

Global agricultural production more than tripled between 1960 and 2015, an expansion that has helped to feed a hungry planet. But the spread of farms has also led to the clearing of forests, grasslands and other natural spaces, spurring a wave of land degradation. 

Around the world, more than 2 billion hectares of land are now officially degraded – an area nearly the size of India and the Russian Federation combined. This decay has caused ecosystems around the world to collapse and is pushing 1 million species towards extinction.  

“The agricultural boom of the last several decades has helped counter hunger and lift millions out of poverty,” said Bruno Pozzi, Deputy Director of the Ecosystems Division of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). “But food systems have also been the greatest driver of biodiversity loss, and unless we make them more sustainable, we risk destroying the natural world, which is the foundation of our economies and our societies and the health and livelihoods of people everywhere.”  

The Biodiversity Plan, a 2022 global agreement to safeguard the natural world, is designed in part to make food systems more sustainable. Its 23 targets include conserving 30 per cent of land, sea and inland waters by 2030. 

As nations move to implement the plan, non-profit groups and farmers around the world are already working to make agriculture more planet friendly. Here is a look at how they are doing that. 

Grasping rainwater 

As land degrades, the soil’s capacity to retain water is drastically reduced. This leads to the disappearance of vegetation, and sets in motion a vicious cycle of drought and erosion. This process, driven in part by climate change, is playing out in Sub-Saharan Africa, resulting in food insecurity and famine.  

Environmental group JustDiggit has devised an ingenious solution to this problem: dig water bunds. These semi-circular pits catch rainwater that would otherwise get washed away over barren soil, helping to quickly regreen a large area. 

JustDiggit says it has so far dug 300,000 bunds and together with millions of farmers and pastoralists, has restored 400,000 hectares of formerly dry, degraded land. This process is helping to bolster farming yields and improve rangelands, while also spurring the return of wildlife. JustDiggit is a partner of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, a global effort to revive natural spaces. 

Turning farms into food forests  

In the last 100 years, many farmers have switched to growing a single crop in their fields, making their produce easier to harvest with machinery. While this has boosted yields, the lack of diversity is increasingly posing a threat to biodiversity and soil health. 

In Kenya, Mali, Senegal, Tanzania and Uganda many farmers, with the support of non-governmental organization Trees for the Future, have returned to planting multiple crops, interspersing them with trees. This has turned their lands into something akin to forests and wild gardens, a process known as agroforestry. 

Trees for the Future has trained tens of thousands of farmers, many living in poverty on degraded lands. The organization has helped restore more than 41,000 hectares of land since 2014, improving crop yields, reviving rangelands and providing habitats for wildlife.  

The push was recently named a UN World Restoration Flagship, an honour that recognizes groundbreaking efforts to revive nature.