Sustainable Soil Management and Soil Carbon Sequestration

Globally, food systems are associated with many unsustainable land use practices that lead to environmental damage such as greenhouse gas emissions, land degradation and biodiversity loss. Social issues, such as poor labour conditions, receive ever greater attention as farming has often been associated with practices that harm humans and society. From an economic standpoint, food systems need to be viable and resilient in order to allow operators in the food chain to make a living from their work. The importance of a global shift towards sustainable land use and food production has been commonly accepted for some time and there is an increasing interest by enterprises in the food and agriculture sector in assessing their sustainability performance. As the world has become increasingly vulnerable to the impacts of changing climate so too has the urgency to establish national and international guidelines and rules to acknowledge carbon management in agricultural supply chains and to improve the policy, strategic and legislative systems to manage soil carbon sequestration. An essential aspect of improved carbon management is legislation which has the ability to enable the development and implementation of soil organic carbon land management practices as sustainable soil standards.