Celebration of World Soil Day 2022 in Tunisia: A tradition revisited

Jendouba, December 2022. The FAO representation in Tunisia, as each year, celebrated on December 5 2022 the World Soil Day in partnership with the General Directorate of the Development and Conservation of Agricultural Land (DGACTA) and the National Institute of Field Crops (INGC). This annual tradition has taken a new form this year: in the open wheat fields of El Kodia (governorate of Jendouba). The event brought together around hundred participants including farmers and technicians of the Ministry of Agriculture in addition to thirty schoolchildren from the region in order to raise awareness on the importance of this resource for agriculture and its important role in ensuring food security.  

Soils where food begins

The celebration event in El Kodia has adopted FAO global campaign colors and theme “Soils where food begins” introduced by the global soil partnership (#SoilWorldDay) which aims to raise awareness on the importance of maintaining healthy ecosystems and human well-being by addressing the growing challenges in soil management, increasing soil awareness and encouraging societies to improve soil health. This is, more than ever, a timely topic in view of the threat of soil fertility loss as a major soil degradation process threatening nutrition and recognized as being among the most important problems at a global level for food security and sustainability all around the globe

Soil Doctors at the heart of the celebration

The forty farmers present were introduced to the global "Soil Doctors" program launched by FAO through the Global Soil Partnership, which contributes directly to the promotion of sustainable soil management at the farm level. This program is a farmer-to-farmer training initiative on a voluntary basis: a learning and information sharing process consistent with the “farmer leader” approach in Field Crops adopted in Tunisia by INGC and implemented since 2018.

The event agenda integrated both theoretical presentations and practical exercises: the farmers were first introduced to the “Soil Doctors" program. Then, the team from both FAO and INGC presented the awareness raising toolkit and educational material including posters adapted to the Tunisian context and translated into the mother tongue of this public, which is Arabic with the support of INGC. Farmer leaders, then, got down to work by undertaking practical exercises to identify the different forms of soil degradation in addition to good agricultural practices to mitigate these degradations and ensure good soil management of their own farms.

Finally, with the support of the DGACTA staff and its central laboratory, the invited farmers undertook a second practical exercise on soil analysis: first field analysis using the PH tester and the field conductivity meter, then sampling using the augers for the analysis at the laboratory level.

Awareness begins with the youngest

"I learned today that couscous, my favorite dish, is produced from durum wheat, which is itself produced in the soil" explains Mohamed Aziz, 11 years-old schoolboy from the region of Jendouba and one of participant to the “soil class”. Mohamed Aziz, like the rest of his classmates present at the celebration, were introduced, through a series of practical exercises to the importance of the soil where food begins.  

The "soil class” agenda was divided into two parts: the first theoretical to explain the correlations between the soil and the daily consumed food. The second practical exercise aimed the concretization of the farm to table principle : the schoolchildren choose between chickpea, beans, lentils and sugar beet seeds and were taught to plant it plant correctly each one in its own pot to grow at home. 

As awareness raising starts with the youngest, the program also included a last practical workshop entitled "Learn about soils" with a demonstration of the different types of soils, how to distinguish it and most important how to protect it and avoid polluting it to obtain healthy food. 

The day finally ended with a poster competition on soils and nutrition, where the children were able to express, in drawings and colors, what they retained from the information accumulated throughout the day. Prizes were distributed to the most creative among them.

Celebrating soils and women too

The celebration coincided with the international campaign "16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence" which started on November 25, on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, and ends on December 10, which marks the Human Rights Day.

The soil celebration was an opportunity to raise awareness among the public, young and old, about this global issue, especially since violence against women, with the digitalization of societies, keeps taking new forms such as cyber-stalking (online or digital violence).