Halt soil salinization, boost soil productivity

On 3 December, the FAO Liaison Office with the Russian Federation, Lomonosov Moscow State University, the World Bank, and the Russian State Agrarian University – Moscow Timiryazev Agricultural Academy, hosted the Sixth Scientific and Practical Conference on Food Security and Soil Science, dedicated to the World Soil Day (WSD), which was held both offline and online.

Oleg Kobiakov, Director of the FAO Moscow Office, and Dr Pavel Krasilnikov, Professor, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Acting Dean of the Faculty of Soil Science of Lomonosov Moscow State University, co-moderated the conference.

The appeal "Halt soil salinization, boost soil productivity" has been chosen as a slogan of the year, said Oleg Kobiakov in his welcome remarks. Today, «more than 80 percent of the soil cover – the main prolific resource for the entire humanity – is in danger. The risks to soils must be considered in the context of the goal to eradicate hunger and ensure food security. Exploiting unused lands for cultivation and farming, as well as salinity control are critical as never before", concluded the Director of the FAO Moscow Office.

 

Professor Krasilnikov reminded that in 2015, for the first time ever, scientists released a report on the status of soil resources where salinization was defined "as the main real threat during soil degradation." The expert clearly defined our priorities: "Our civilization is based on agriculture; it depends on land… We can live without internet, but not without land." 

Lifeng Li, FAO Director of the Land and Water Division, highlighted the critical role soils play in ensuring food security. "Today soils are included in the global agenda, their importance is growing. We must safeguard and take care of them for better ensuring food security", noted Lifeng Li. He described the status of world’s soils and pointed out the necessity to undertake urgent actions to preserve and reclaim soils. 

"About 33 percent of soils are degraded and their status is worsening, which represents a serious concern. Salinization and sodification are a serious threat to humanity in relation to food security. This problem concerns every country. The most affected regions are central Asia and Africa, though salt-affected soils can be found in all continents. The average losses due to salt-affected soils is estimated at USD 27 billion", he added.

Tatiana Volodko, Head of the International Organizations Division of the International Cooperation and Export Department of the Ministry of Agriculture of the Russian Federation, noted the negative consequences of soil salinization. Among the negative factors she listed the following: weakening of soils’ contribution to the maintenance of the biogeochemical cycle, the extinction of many types of plants, a decrease in the gene pool of terrestrial populations due to the deterioration of organisms’ life, an increase in migration processes, and, in some cases, an increase in the number of halophytes that have no beneficial effect on the ecosystems.

Tatiana Volodko highlighted that for Russia the problem of salinization is on the top of the agenda and presented statistical data. "The total area covered by farmlands accounts for about 380 million hectares, with 12 percent of them not being used for different reasons, including a number of natural factors: water and wind erosion, salinization, waterlogging, which leads to a significant fertility reduction and non-effective use of low productivity lands. Salinization basically develops in southern regions of our country, namely: steppe, arid and semi-arid ones", noted Tatiana Volodko.

Bayarsaykhan Tumurdavaa, World Bank Senior Economist for Agriculture in the Russian Federation, described the cooperation with the Eurasian Center for Food Security, founded on the initiative of the Government of the Russian Federation as a response to the 2007-2008 food crisis.

"Over the 10-year period of joint work we have arranged over 50 analytical research, including theme-related documents on practices of sustainable management of natural resources in Africa, Central Asia and the South Caucasus."

Moreover, we have developed "two master programmes and four short online courses, including on sustainable management of water and land resources. In addition, we have educated more than 1000 experts during annual conferences, seminars, trainings and analytical projects throughout the Eurasian region and beyond."

Vladimir Moshkalo, Head of the UNEP Country Office in the Russian Federation, underlined: "We should try, and this is the World Soil Day goal, to bring home to decision-makers and all humanity the unique importance that soils have and clarify what they mean for our survival. The UNEP expert concluded his speech mentioning a phrase, attributed to Albert Einstein: "The environment is what nature turns into if it is not protected. Therefore, let us work in a way that allows nature to remain nature, and not our environment."  

Rainer Baritz, European Environment Agency (EEA), Chair of the European Soil Partnership, informed the audience about a strategy on soil preservation that has been recently published. "We are waiting for a new legislation, which will foster soil preservation. Soil degradation and salinization, besides their negative impact on food security, have harmful consequences for the economy. Taking into consideration the interaction between economy, ecology and food security, we call upon governments to help us reclaim soils and halt salinization and sodification processes."

Ronald Vargas, Secretary of the FAO Global Soil Partnership, expressed gratitude to the FAO Moscow Office for organizing the event dedicated to the WSD. Highlighting the importance of solving the problem of salt-affected soils, which negatively affect both fertility and crops, he noted that it is "the soil health that provides a number of necessary ecosystem services in order to reach SDGs and preserve the planet."

The FAO expert told about the Global map on salt-affected soils. The gravest threat comes from human-induced soil salinization occurring in the aftermath of irrational management of soil resources. What can be done to boost soil productivity? Raising awareness on soil salinization threats, improving the use of sustainable farming systems that can be adapted to salinization, conducting research, developing new strategies and engaging stakeholders.  

What lies ahead? What are the different scenarios we will have to face in relation to salt-affected soils? Jorge Battle-Sales, Chair of the FAO International Network on Salt-affected soils, presented the forecasts regarding soil salinization. It is assumed that by the end of the 21 century the area of arid lands will increase by 23 percent, 80 percent of which will affect developing countries, and it can lead to aggravation of water scarcity problem and salt accumulation in soils.

Under this scenario, up to 2 billion people will live on territories where critical water scarcity will occur, and they will witness absorption and outflow of water from the soil in a number of regions.

 

In his presentation Edoardo A.C. Costantini, IUSS President elect, CNR-IBE, "Farm scale innovations and research need in addressing soil salinization", named, in particular, the 25 locations with salinization problems due to several factors ranked according to their impact: coastal flooding; naturally occurring soil salinization; leakage of irrigation canal; marine intrusion; earth movements; soil management; irrigation, and drainage.

 

Describing challenges and solutions, in particular in irrigation scheduling, Dr Costantini outlined such challenges as fulfilling crop water requirements; promoting salt leaching from the root zone; controlling the ground water level and dealing with limited water availability. To cope with salinization, he suggested storing salts in upper soil layers, but beyond the root zone of active uptake. That could be achieved by promoting such innovative solutions as developing and using simulation models and decision support systems to define adequate volumes of water and irrigation frequency.

Tibor Tóth of the International Union of Soil Sciences, Commission 3.6 Salt-affected soils & Institute for Soil Sciences, Centre for Agricultural Research, in his report on "Old issues and new challenges in soil salinity research" provided a telling example of contradictory relationship between irrigation and salinization.

The Salton Sea was accidentally created in 1905 when the Colorado River broke through levees constructed to divert water for irrigation of Imperial County farms. For 18 months, river water poured into the second-lowest point in the United States, the Salton Sink desert. "The relationship between agriculture and the Salton Sea is a love-hate one," noted Dr Tóth. "Agriculture is the source of the water it so desperately needs to replenish itself, but it is also the source of salt and other nutrients, of which there are too many."

Dr Tóth also named the most critical issues of management of salt-affected soils. According to the speaker, those were selection of proper land use type (such as grassland, cropland, paddy, fishpond, forest), selection of a suitable crop for the particular soil conditions. Evaluation of the drainage conditions for future irrigation, selection of the optimal irrigation technique, water quality and drainage of the plots and last, but not least, proper disposal of drainage effluents.

In his speech, Alexander Sharabaika, Deputy CEO of PJSC PhosAgro, stressed that the company's partnership with FAO continues to expand into new areas and over the past three years of their joint work it has become a benchmark for an effective soil degradation control: “Together we raise farmers’ competencies in sustainable agriculture, teach them how to: use their land efficiently, protect soils from degradation and destruction, grow environmentally friendly products on them, and, as a result, make an important contribution to the fight against hunger. Our partnership has become an international benchmark for effective work in soil protection.”

Nikolay Khitrov, Head of the Department of Genesis and Reclamation of Saline and Sodic Soils, Dokuchaev Soil Science Institute, spoke about the electronic "Map of Salt-affected Soils and Prospects for Sustainable Management of Saline and Sodic Soils in Russia."  It helps in the preparation for decision-making on issues related to soil rehabilitation and productivity improvement, climate change, prevention, and control of environmental degradation.

The speaker also presented a scheme of an algorithm for transfer of information from the Salt-affected Soil vector map of Russia and the Soil map of Russia into GSSmap raster layers.

Evgeny Shein, Professor of the Department of Physics and Soil Reclamation of the Faculty of Soil Science, Lomonosov Moscow State University, in his presentation on "Modeling the Water-salt Transport in Saline Soils" reminded that "at present we distinguish primary or natural salinization and secondary or accelerated salinization due to human activities."

The mechanisms of soil salinization are based on the laws of moisture movement in soil. However, the existing "models predict the movement of water and salts in the soil profile, i.e. for one point on a landscape, at one point of a farmland – but a forecast is to be given for the soil cover." Today, concluded the expert, "to predict and optimize salinization control, soil science is to deal with a new modern challenge of using mathematical physically-based landscape forecasting models."

Temur Khujanazarov, Disaster Prevention Research Institute, Kyoto University, described "Biosaline agriculture as a means in achieving SDG goals under SATREPS Japan – Uzbekistan Initiative framework."

"Through water cycle analysis using long-term climate data and earth observation satellite information, the amount of available water resources, evapotranspiration, and crop growth in the target area are estimated, and that information is utilized in daily agricultural production management practices", Dr Khujanazarov explained.

"In doing so, the adaptation capacity to future climate changes will be improved. In addition, optimum combination of crop species is proposed from the viewpoints of resistance to salinity and drought, salt removal ability, and water use efficiency to realize productive and sustainable agriculture through better irrigation and drainage management preventing salt damage progress, saline land reclamation by active cultivation of halophytes, and utilization of halophytes. 

In this way, a research and education base for saline agriculture will be established locally to systematically train and educate climate change adaptation measures and farmland salinity management", Dr Khujanazarov concluded.

Zhanyl Bozayeva, Programme Officer/Team Leader, FAO Kazakhstan, in her presentation "Soil Salinity Mapping and Biosaline Agriculture in Kazakhstan" described CACILM-2, which is "a regional FAO-GEF project in five Central Asian countries and Turkey and aims to scale up best practices and integrated natural resources management approaches in drought-prone and salt-affected land."

"Kazakhstan with its typical arid climate and intensive irrigation agriculture in some its parts is severely exposed to the risk of soil salinization. An outdated soil salinity map and a lack of knowledge and skills impeded the effectiveness of efforts to combat the soil salinization," Ms Bozayeva outlined the background information.

Then, she focused on "an integrated modular approach applied for a manual, which addressed soil, water, biosaline agriculture, and more." The purpose of the manual was to "improve farmers’ knowledge of salinity management." Eventually, "the best biosaline practices are to be applied to salinity vulnerable areas identified by the soil salinity mapping, and the subsequent change in salinity will be monitored by a regular update of the map," Ms Bozayeva noted.

Professor Ivan Vasenev, Head of the Department of Ecology, Timiryazev Agricultural Academy, delivered a presentation on "Analysis and Normative Forecasting of the Agroecological State of Saline and Alkaline Soils in Smart Systems of Agromonitoring and Intelligent Decision Support Systems (DSS)."

Agroecological monitoring, explained Professor Vasenev, is "a system of observations specially organized in time and space of the main components of agro-ecosystems aimed at developing recommendations for agro-ecological optimization of their use, conservation and/or restoration – while minimizing environmental risks of agricultural production and ensuring sustainable profitable production of agro-ecologically justified quantity and quality, with the main ecological functions and services of basic landscape components being maintained."

The expert recalled that climate change could lead to significant reductions (up to 10-20 percent or more) in average yields of rainfed crops in most regions of their mass production due to a gradual exacerbation of general and intra-seasonal aridity. He also presented formulas of a combined algorithm for automated calculating the balanced doses of mineral fertilizers.

Over 50 panelists and expert groups from Russia and several foreign countries attended the Conference.

The participants’ presentations and the full recording of the Conference are available at the following links:

On the following links are:

• Presentations of the participants
• Full recording of the conference

 

Background information

World Soil Day, proclaimed by the UN General Assembly, has been celebrated since 2014 on 5 December to highlight the importance of soils and promote sustainable soil management in accordance with the Voluntary Guidelines for Sustainable Soil Management.

Natural saline and sodic soils provide the basis for valuable ecosystems and serve as a site where a number of plants adapted to extreme environmental conditions grow. However, secondary salinization and soil sodification can develop rapidly or increase as a result of unsustainable human activities and threaten agricultural production, food security, the provision of basic ecosystem services and the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). 

Soil salinization and sodification are listed among the gravest global threats to arid and semi-arid regions, as well as to farmlands in coastal zones and those with wastewater irrigation, regardless of climatic conditions.

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The forum, held at the UN building in Moscow, was aimed at sharing experience and knowledge, as well as strengthening cooperation between scientists, representatives of authorities, agribusiness, and non-profit organizations to promote soil research and solve practical problems in soil salinization and sodification.

 

#World Soil Day