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It is the constant bugbear of soil scientists and campaigners that soil health is either misunderstood or overlooked as an environmental issue when compared with headline-grabbing topics - climate change, air quality, biodiversity loss, plastic pollution – despite its importance in its own right, and its links with these other environmental issues.  

 

There are good reasons for this. Soil can seem dull, static, and so easy to take for granted. It is neither visually arresting, emotive or charismatic. Attempts to lend a sense of urgency to its decline e.g. headlines like “there are only 60 harvests left” do not stand up to scientific scrutiny.  So how can we create a buzz around soil? How can we capture the public imagination and motivate policy? How can we unleash people’s creativity around soil conservation and protection?

 

In this session, we bring in expert environmental communicators to ask what soil-folk can learn from other environmental campaigns about the tactics, messages, data and channels that can help us bring soils to life.   

 

The event was chaired by Matthew Orman of the Sustainable Soils Alliance and uksoils with Anna Krzywoszynska of the Institute for Sustainable Food at the University of Sheffield, Soil Care Network and uksoils as moderator. 

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