Every year on December 5, World Soil Day is celebrated to attract the attention of the international community to saving and protecting the soils in our planet.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO):

• Soil holds three times as much carbon as the atmosphere and can help us meet the challenges of a changing climate

• 815 million people are food insecure and 2 billion people are nutritionally insecure.

• 95% of our food comes from soil

• 33% of our global soils are already degraded

The Republic of Belarus does not remain aloof from solving problems associated with land degradation, and is conducting targeted work to improve soil fertility.

It should be noted that in 2016 the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Protection of the Republic of Belarus, together with the stakeholders, developed a plan of priority measures for the implementation of the National Action Plan to prevent land degradation (including soil) for 2016-2020, which, among other things, provides for development of soil-saving grain-grass crop rotations and the introduction of methods of long-term use of adapted grass and legume-grass grass stands on peat soils.

The following sources were used in writing the article:

http://www.un.org/en/events/soilday/

http://greenbelarus.info/articles/06-12-2016/vsemirnyy-den-pochv-podchyorkivaet-vazhnuyu-rol-bobovyh