Advancing soil literacy

The meeting will be held on the 13th -14th of March 2025 and will be an opportunity to share and explore best practices from a range of diverse perspectives and targeted stakeholders, as well as reflections towards a future roadmap of possible actions.

While included with topics such as curing cancer, ocean well-being and climate change in the group of Horizon Europe Missions, soil lacks the same visibility or consciousness. Soils are often regarded as complex and technical, which might make it less accessible to the general public. However, complex and technical issues such as cosmology, human health, climate change, and even dinosaurs, are regularly presented to the public. Political inaction reflects this lack of interest by society. Even now, after the Green Deal, policy documents still emerge with a focus only on air and water yet healthy soils underpin our very fabric.

Both the EU Soil Strategy 2030 and the Mission Soil have increasing soil awareness as key objectives.  Despite many notable success stories, initiatives are only reaching a fraction of the population.

In conjunction with the European Network on Soil Awareness, the workshop would like to explore how the EU Soil Strategy and the Mission Soil can really drive a revolution in soil awareness by taking soil literacy and citizen engagement to a new level.

The meeting will be an opportunity to share and explore best practices from a range of diverse perspectives and targeted stakeholders, as well as reflections towards a future roadmap of possible actions.

Participants have a track-record in soil awareness raising while participating Mission Soil Projects have a strong soil awareness, citizen engagement or educational component.