A KEY RESOURCE FOR FOOD AND ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION
Bahía Blanca, December 3, 2020 – In a year as particular as this 2020 that is ending, in which the Covid-19 pandemic highlighted more than ever the importance of food production, World Soil Day, celebrated on 5 December, is a timely opportunity to highlight the importance of this resource for humanity.
The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), which instituted this celebration in 2014, indicated that “healthy soils are needed for a healthy life” and highlighted the motto chosen for this year: “Let’s keep the soil alive and protect biodiversity”. Profertil, as the main Argentinean fertilizer company, has a key role to play in the path towards the achievement of those objectives.
This motto (“Let’s keep the soil alive and protect biodiversity”) focuses on the need to maintain the wide variety of organisms that live in the soil, which make a great contribution to processes that are indispensable to life on planet Earth.
Argentina, with its agricultural systems that are almost 100% directly planted, makes a key contribution to the conservation of this biodiversity. The country is a world leader in this production system, which avoids the soil removal that was historically done in agriculture and is still carried out in large regions of the world.
Cereals such as corn and wheat, with their roots that grow deep into the soil, also make a great contribution to the goal set by the United Nations.
The urea produced by Profertil in its Bahía Blanca plant is key to increasing these crops’ productivity, which accelerates the virtuous cycle of yield generation and, at the same time, boosts the replenishment of nutrients in the soil.
The soil is nothing less than the place that houses a quarter of the planet’s biodiversity. Clearly, it is not only the platform that allows crops to grow, but also fulfills another key function, which is to store carbon, thanks to plants, thus mitigating the emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
Considering its importance and all these challenges, FAO launched the Global Soil Partnership (GSP), of which Profertil is a member.
“We are aware, as manufacturers of strategic nutrients for agriculture and for the soil, of our double role of helping the producers to be more efficient and, at the same time, to promote doing that by taking care and improving the environment”, summarized Federico Veller, general manager of the company.
By 2050, the world will have 9.5 billion people, almost 2.5 billion more than today. And they will have to be fed. Taking care of the soil, tilling it, and feeding it correctly, will be fundamental to achieve that goal. Argentina, with direct sowing and the best technologies for agricultural inputs, is at the world’s forefront in this field.