I recently saw this 4 min video called The Value of Soils and I wanted to recommend it here. It is developed by the Economics of Land Degradation (ELD) Initiative and discusses a topic that I hear of daily but I think there is less awareness of outside the small circle that I interact with professionally, namely the topic of depleting soils. Land degradation is problematic all around the world, but I think that although most people are conscious of desertification and the impacts of deforestation, few are aware of the extent of depleting soil nutrients, soil salinity, how production is expanded through the use of marginal land with limited prospects, how the unsustainable use of soils is one of the biggest contributors to climate change, and what it means for us in the future. To me, this is one of the biggest challenges to feeding 9 billion people in two decades and to eradicating poverty, and we will all be affected. So check out the video! And apologies for not being able to embedd the video – I still haven’t figured out how to do it since I moved my blog… Instead, here is a pic of the amazing terraces constructed to combat soil erosion on Rwanda’s hillsides.