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Keep soil alive, protect soil biodiversity

Global symposium on soil biodiversity, 19–22 April 2021 – Outcome document








FAO. 2021. Keep soil alive, protect soil biodiversity. Global symposium on soil biodiversity, 19–22 April 2021 – Outcome document. Rome, Italy


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    Agriculture is crucial for the national economy of Afghanistan and in particularly so for the agriculturally dependent population which is constituting 60 percent of the total population. Adoption of new strategies for agriculture monitoring, rural land use planning and land management are urgently required to reduce hunger and poverty among rural population and to assure sustainable food and feed production for future generations. The availability of reliable information on natural resources and agriculture for its monitoring and analysis is indispensable to development and implementation of such strategies. However, productivity in the agricultural sector has been relatively low. Afghanistan has the potential to increase its output of cereals, fruits and vegetables. For this purpose, the project “Strengthening Afghanistan Institutions’ Capacity for the Assessment of Agriculture Production and Scenario Development” (GCP/AFG/087/EC), funded by the European Union, is implemented by the Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock (MAIL) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). Among the project objectives are improving the understanding of the country’s national resources endowment and limitations as well as assessing agricultural production capacities under current climatic conditions and likely impacts of climate change. Within the context of this project the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) support and implement a National Agro-Ecological Zoning activity in Afghanistan (NAEZ) which assesses quality and availability of land resources and identifies crop cultivation potentials - suitable area, production and attainable yield - under prevailing soil and terrain conditions and for given current or future agroclimatic conditions. One of the outputs of the NAEZ activities is this Agro-Ecological Zones Atlas which is based on applications of the FAO/IIASA National Agro-Ecological Zoning system for current and future climates. The Atlas provides two distinct parts, namely:
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    The GSAS21 was held virtually on the Zoom platform on 20-22 October 2021 and was attended by over 4 000 participants. The objective of the symposium was to combine science, policy, and practice to evaluate the issues related to salt-affected soils and to formulate a strategy for the implementation of Voluntary Guidelines for Sustainable Soil Management in the areas affected by salinity and sodicity. The GSAS21 symposium was structured around three main themes focusing on: 1) Assessment, mapping, and monitoring of salt-affected soils; 2) Integrated soil – water – crop solutions in rehabilitation and management of salt-affected areas; 3) Agenda for action to prevent and rehabilitate salt-affected soils, protect natural saline and sodic soils, and scale-up sustainable soil management practices. The fourth session on testimonies from the field was organized to showcase the good practices illustrating the rehabilitation and sustainable use of salt-affected soils. The symposium included more than 70 oral presentations, presented over 17 hours of parallel sessions. Recordings of the presentations can be accessed via . In addition, 58 posters were open for public voting during the GSAS. Over 67 000 votes have been received which helped identify three winners of the poster session. The posters are available from . The recommendations presented in this document aim to support decision-making and innovative actions to minimize the challenges posed by soil salinity and sodicity, thereby assisting in the augmentation of global food security and ecosystem protection through salt-affected soils management in impacted regions.
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    The findings reported in this brief have been adapted from the FAO Agricultural Development Economics Technical Study No. 19 Inversión pública productiva en la agricultura para la recuperación económica con bienestar rural: un análisis de escenarios prospectivos para Paraguay. This study presents prospective scenarios that provide information on where, within Paraguayan agriculture, the few public investment resources that would be allocated to the sector should be prioritized. A new public investment equivalent to 0.25% of GDP in the 2023–2025 period (1 798 billion guaranies in 2014), financed with external borrowing, would contribute to economic recovery. The increases in private consumption and GDP are between 0.1% and 0.2%, depending on the sector receiving the investment in agriculture. The increases in agrifood GDP are somewhat higher and the reductions in the national poverty rate vary between 0.2% and 0.5%.

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