Healthy soils teeming microbes are the foundations of resilient, sustainable and global food production ecosystems. Credit: Fabiola Ortiz/IPS By Esther Ngumbi
URBANA, Illinois, US, May 6 2026 (IPS) A newly published review in Nature Reviews Earth & Environment has revealed disturbing statistics on the growing environmental threats posed by global food production. The global food system, designed to feed and nourish humanity, is now a major contributor to climate change via greenhouse gas emissions , and the largest driver of freshwater depletion , biodiversity loss , and nutrient pollution . Alarmingly, this new review brings attention to a concerning cruel twist and a deeper problem manifested through feedback loops between environmental change pressures including climate change and global food production.
In this vicious hard to break feedback loop, farmers are forced to use more inputs including fertilizers and toxic pesticides to sustain high yields, which in turn ruins and further compromises the environment while making food production harder in the long term.
In this vicious hard to break feedback loop, farmers are forced to use more inputs including fertilizers and toxic pesticides to sustain high yields, which in turn ruins and further compromises the environment while making food production harder in the long term The central question then becomes: How do we break these vicious feedback loops that threaten to undermine our global food system in the longer term? What specific foundational strategies stand a chance of reducing environmental pressures and improving global food systems and agricultural production resillience?
First and foremost, the foundations for breaking this cruel cycle begin in the soil , by investing in revitalizing and improving the health of soils and agricultural lands that power global food production. Healthy soils teeming microbes are the foundations of resilient, sustainable and global food production ecosystems . Healthy soils store and filter water and cycle nutrients, support the growth of nutritious food while simultaneously helping agricultural crop plants to cope with water stress, combat diseases and pests, and use nutrients more effectively, reducing the need for additional inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides.
Convincingly, smart investments channeled towards improving soil health and soil microbiome can help farmers and food producers to produce more and healthy crops with less, limit environmental damage and simultaneously break the emerging feedback loops between global food production and environmental damage.
The good news is that improving and building soil health and soil microbiomes is a top priority for many stakeholders involved in food production in the United States and around the world including farmers, researchers, governments, philanthropists, non-governmental and non-profit organizations, research funding agencies, the African Union and the United Nations .
Excitingly, adoption of several sustainable regenerative practices including cover cropping, crop rotation, conservation tillage, planting diverse crops , integrating livestock and agroforestry, alongside with inoculation of soils with microbes including arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi can improve soil health and quality, improving biodiversity, mitigate climate change, and extend soil longevity beyond 10,000 years . Moreover, research is confirming that these strategies do indeed work.
Second, another intervention that can reduce environmental decline while improving global food production is investing in innovative climate-smart agriculture and precision agriculture practices. Scientific evidence has shown that adopting these practices can sustain global food production while limiting environmental harm.
Complementing and accompanying these foundational strategies is the urgent need to prioritize breeding and developing multi-stress and stress-resilient crops and integrating stress resilient traits from wild relatives of domesticated crops.
Additionally, multi-stress and climate-resilient crops can be grown alongside other annual and perennial crop species while being integrated into broader sustainable and regenerative farming practices including agroforestry. Collectively, these practices can sustain food production while minimizing environmental harm, thereby breaking feedback loops.
Finally, these strategies must be paired with policies and incentives to ensure maximum adoption. Farmers who adopt regenerative and sustainable soil building, climate-smart, precision agriculture practices while planting stress resilient crops should be supported and rewarded.
Alongside policies and incentives, there is a need to ensure that farmers, who are central in global food production embrace and adopt these sustainable feedback loops breaking practices. Embracing these practices can improve agricultural productivity, resilience and efficiency .
Of course, it is critical to understand and be aware of the constraints that still hinder stakeholders in global food production including farmers from adopting these global food production and environmental pressures feedback loop breaking practices.
Feeding our growing world sustainably requires everyone to confront the vicious cycle of food production and environmental decline. Researchers, policymakers, governments, private businesses, civil society, and philanthropists must act with urgency .
We should view mitigation and adaptation as interconnected strategies to address the dual challenge of producing food while protecting the environmental systems that enable it. The most effective and sustainable solutions will strengthen agriculture and reduce environmental harm. Time is of the essence. Esther Ngumbi, PhD is Assistant Professor, Department of Entomology, African American Studies Department, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign