Global Soil Partnership Plenary Assembly

Increasing marginality of agricultural production systems is emerging as a major constraint to enhance productivity at the farm level, thus resulting in enormous food and nutrition security challenges and causing degradation of productive land. Research shows that that about 20 percent of the global irrigated agricultural lands are affected by salinization, which causes an annual loss of about USD 38.4 billion.

In this context, FAO and Global Soil Partnership (GSP) will organize the 4th Session of the Global Soil Partnership Plenary Assembly from May 23 to 25, 2016, to discuss the role of soils in food security.

The Global Soil Partnership Plenary Assembly is the main yearly meeting of Intergovernmental Technical Panel on Soils members, GSP Executive Secretariat, representatives of the different partners and members to FAO. This assembly is in charge of reviewing and prioritizing GSP actions, and facilitating a balanced regional decision-making process.

Dr. Ismahane A Elouafi, Director General of ICBA, will speak at the event to highlight how biosaline agriculture can help to improve food security in marginal and saline environments in particular and global food security as a whole.