The Hidden Economic Power of Healthy Soils

The report highlights that up to 40% of global land is degraded, costing the global economy $878 billion annually. It positions soil as 'living foundational infrastructure' and urges businesses to move from extractive models to stewardship to mitigate risks to food security, water systems, and climate regulation.

• Soil degradation is a systemic global risk, with up to 40% of the world's land already degraded, which directly affects 3.2 billion people and costs the global economy approximately $878 billion every year.
• Healthy soils function as a 'master variable' for global stability, regulating carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, and water cycles; they store more carbon than the atmosphere and all terrestrial vegetation combined.
• Many businesses have 'invisible' dependencies on soil health; for example, an LVMH assessment found that 58.4% of its raw-material volumes depend on nutrient cycling and soil quality, with over 40% of those materials sourced from regions with degraded soils.
• Investing in soil health creates tangible business value by increasing productivity, reducing yield variability, and enhancing resilience to climate shocks like droughts and floods.
• Case studies demonstrate that integrated soil fertility management can significantly boost profitability; in Western Kenya, combining balanced NPK fertilization with manure application doubled available phosphorus and increased net returns to $1,136 per hectare compared to $675 in control groups.
• Regenerative practices can drastically improve water infiltration and reduce volatility; at Brown's Ranch in North Dakota, water infiltration reportedly increased from 0.5 inches per hour to 8 inches per hour over two decades.
• Transitioning to 'nature farming' can restore business viability; South African company ZZ2 reduced reliance on mineral fertilizers and agrochemicals by approximately 60% while increasing tomato production from 10 million boxes in 2003–2004 to nearly 21 million in 2018–2019.
• The transition to healthy soils requires a coordinated financing ecosystem: public/philanthropic capital for proof of concept (e.g., GIZ ProSoil in Ethiopia), blended finance for de-risking (e.g., LDN Fund), and institutional capital for scaling natural capital markets (e.g., Mirova Natural Capital).
• Technological advances in soil spectroscopy and satellite Earth Observation are reducing monitoring costs and enabling the creation of predictive maps for soil organic carbon and erosion risk across entire continents.
• Large-scale restoration is possible through strong institutional coordination, as seen in China's Loess Plateau project, which rehabilitated over 4 million hectares of land and lifted more than 2.5 million people out of poverty.

APA

World Economic Forum (2026). The Hidden Economic Power of Healthy Soils. https://reports.weforum.org/docs/WEF_The_business_case_for_investing_in_soil_health_2026.pdf

Chicago

World Economic Forum. The Hidden Economic Power of Healthy Soils. 2026. https://reports.weforum.org/docs/WEF_The_business_case_for_investing_in_soil_health_2026.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=World Economic Forum |title=The Hidden Economic Power of Healthy Soils |date=August 2026 |url=https://reports.weforum.org/docs/WEF_The_business_case_for_investing_in_soil_health_2026.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{worldeconomicforum2026hidden, author = {{World Economic Forum}}, title = {{The Hidden Economic Power of Healthy Soils}}, institution = {World Economic Forum}, year = {2026}, month = aug, url = {https://reports.weforum.org/docs/WEF_The_business_case_for_investing_in_soil_health_2026.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }