The Mission on Soil Health focuses on protecting and restoring soils because they underpin food systems, biodiversity, clean water, climate resilience, cultural landscapes, and economic prosperity. It addresses the fact that most EU soils are currently degraded and need urgent, long-term stewardship.

Why soils matter

• Healthy soil is the foundation of food production, supports diverse habitats, filters water, and strengthens climate resilience, while also sustaining cultural heritage and rural and urban landscapes.

• Soil formation is extremely slow, with a centimetre taking hundreds of years to develop, yet it can be lost rapidly through erosion, pollution, or industrial accidents, making it a fragile and non-renewable resource on human timescales.

The problem: unhealthy soils

• Estimates indicate that well over half of soils in the EU are in poor condition, reflecting pressures from intensive agriculture, land sealing, contamination, and climate change.

• This widespread degradation threatens food security, water quality, biodiversity, and the capacity of soils to store carbon and buffer climate impacts.

What the Soil Mission does

• The Mission advances a transition to healthy soils by funding an ambitious research and innovation programme that also includes a strong social science dimension to understand behaviours, governance, and uptake of solutions.

• It is building an effective network of 100 living labs and lighthouses to co-create knowledge with practitioners, test solutions in real-life conditions, and demonstrate their practical, economic, and environmental value.

Monitoring and awareness

• The Mission is developing a harmonised European framework for soil monitoring to generate comparable data, track progress, and guide evidence-based policies and management practices.

• It also invests in awareness-raising so that citizens, land managers, and decision-makers better understand the critical role of soils and the need to restore and protect them.

Call to action: Mission Soil Manifesto

• The Mission invites regions, municipalities, companies, organisations, schools, universities, research institutions, and individual citizens to sign the Mission Soil Manifesto and join a community committed to caring for soil.

• By endorsing the manifesto, stakeholders signal their support, strengthen cooperation, and help drive concrete actions that improve soil health for current and future generations.