Soil health is crucial to agriculture.
Unsustainable practices like heavy fertiliser use and ploughing lead to fragile soil that washes away in heavy rains - reducing the land's productivity in the long run.
Further threats come from climate change, which is causing more frequent extreme weather events like droughts and heavy rains - leading to even more soil erosion.
In parts of Tanzania, soils are disappearing. A combination of climate change and socioeconomic stresses has led to soil crumbling away into nearby rivers and lakes.
Recognising the threat, one community set up an environmental committee to allow strategic decision-making for soil restoration, working with researchers led by Professor Will Blake, in collaboration with the Nelson Mandela African Institution for Science and Technology, who are experimenting with a portable gamma ray sensor that can quickly assess the health of the soil.
The community identified areas where the soil was severely depleted, and so excluded their cattle. With the pressure removed, the land re-greened quickly and the soil began to recover.
The solution is to understand the soil better, in particular, what makes it healthy and resilient, to develop more sustainable and climate-smart farming.
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