The world celebrates World Soil Day on 5 December

BRUSSELS, Belgium, 5 December 2020: Using their ‘Keep  soil  alive, Protect  biodiversity’,  the FAO is celebrating the  World  Soils  Day  today, raising   awareness   for   the   value   of healthy biodiverse soil ecosystems around the globe.

As the sector producing growing media and soil improvers, the trade body for the growing media industry GME says it can only stress the fact the world’s soil is an absolutely essential and limited natural resource that needs protection and proper management. When sourcing  important raw material peat, GME says the sector is well aware of its role with regards to wetlands and believe, that it can help achieving restoration targets for degraded peatlands by  broadly implementing the principles of ‘Responsibly Produced Peat’ (RPP).

The acronym RPP stands for peat that is extracted only from sources without high natural  value (High  Conservation  Value areas are left untouched) and during restoration of the peatlands, an after-use plan helps to turn former production fields into areas with a positive ecological impact, maximising environmental benefits including biodiversity.

Once applied in horticulture, growing media products help to protect soil in two different ways:

Directly: Soil covers and mulching products protect soils from dehydration, increase soil carbon contents and stimulate soil organisms, increasing biodiversity

Indirectly: Growing media used in (closed) protected cropping systems (“soilless growing”) enable sustainable plant production without using soil; a lower land-use footprint is achieved and helps limiting the pressure of the economic demand for soil.