A joint assessment undertaken by the Soil Health and Food (SH&F) mission board and the Joint Research Centre (JRC) states that 60 to 70 % of soils in Europe are currently considered unhealthy due to e.g. pollution, excess nutrients, compaction and soil degradation (A Soil Deal for Europe, European Commission, 2022a).

The European Commission SH&F mission has set the goal to have 75 % of European soils healthy or significantly improved by 2030, in line with a new EU law on the protection of soil health. The private sector is proposing explicit visions of sustainable food systems too, such as the 1000 landscapes for 1 billion people (1000 landscapes, 2022), the 100-million farmers platform of the World Economic Forum (World Economic Forum, 2022) and the Regen10 initiative of the World Business Council on Sustainable Development (WBCSD, 2022).