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FAO holds Symposium to stop erosion worldwide
21.05.2019 13:11 "Agro Perspectiva" (Kyiv) —
As of last week, the Global Symposium on Soil Erosion took place within the FAO Rome (Italy) headquarters, FAO reports.
As to the report, the Symposium, organized by the FAO and its partners, was attended by a lot of scientists, academic experts, farmers, government officials from many countries. The Symposium was aimed to catalyze efforts to reduce the soils’ depletion and erosion worldwide.
Reportedly, while speaking within the Symposium, the participants told that wind, rain and industrial farming techniques accelerate soil erosion and can be mitigated before the world faces calamitous losses as agricultural yields and critical ecosystem functions.
«The negative impacts of soil erosion are ever more evident and the need to work jointly ever more urgent,» FAO Deputy Director-General, Climate and Natural Resources, Maria Helena Semedo, said.
«We have solutions. Preventing soil erosion through education, advocacy and concrete actions in the field are the best way to maintain healthy soils and help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals,» she stressed.
As to Semedo, now the equivalent of one football field of soil is eroded every five seconds, and the planet is on a path that could lead to the degradation of over 90% of all the Earth soils by 2050. Erosion, triggered by intensive agriculture, tillage, mono-cropping, overgrazing, urban sprawl, deforestation and industrial and mining activities, can lead to the global crop yield losses of over 50%.
It is to be admitted, the Symposium outcomes are the identification of «global hotspots» warranting priority actions within the soil management, a data base on the best erosion control practices, and more consensus on how to carry out cost-benefit analyses of prospective interventions to prevent, remediate and mitigate soil erosion.
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