Earth's most fragile skin, soil, is among the most precious resources to humans. However, in recent decades soil has been losing its productive capability and its productive potential for agriculture, and major land uses.

The main driving force for the decline in soil quality is land degradation. It is caused by multiple forces including extreme weather conditions (such as drought) and anthropogenic activities that pollute and degrade the quality of soils and its land use, negatively affecting food production and livelihoods. Land degradation sky-rocketed during the 20th century due to increasing a combination of agricultura(livestock production, over-cultivation, overgrazing, forest conversion) urbanisation, deforestation and coastal surges which salinate land.

Over the last 150 years, half of the topsoil on the Earth has been lost. As mentioned earlier, agriculture is one of the human practices that has negatively affected soil quality by promoting soil erosion, compaction, soil salinity, and nutrient degradation. These stresses pose a great threat for food provision, water and air quality because land degradation can indirectly affect human health in various ways. For instance, where land is degraded, results in a reduction of land ment for food production, thus water sources dry up and populations are pressured to move to hospitable areas.

The time is now to put the health of soil as a primary priority. As there lies many challenges to maintain healthy soil, one should remain vigilant and find innovative ways to maintain and sustain the fragile skin from which biodiversity springs!