image: SOLO consortium and stakeholders, Portugal, 2025. Photo by Pensoft Publishers
Credit: Pensoft Publishers
If the recent adoption of the Soil Monitoring and Resilience Directive highlights anything, it is the vital importance that healthy soils have for all life on Earth, and the urgency to act on their protection.
Horizon Europe-funded project Soils for Europe’s (SOLO) main objective is to identify current knowledge gaps, bottlenecks, and drivers, proposing novel approaches to be considered by the Soil Mission, dedicated to transitioning towards healthier soils by 2030.
From 14 to 17 October 2025, SOLO held its annual stakeholder meeting, hosted by one of its partners, the University of Évora, in Portugal. The four-day event welcomed project partners and external stakeholders alike, with two days reserved for a consortium meeting and two days open to stakeholders.
The consortium days consisted of a project meeting, allowing partners to better catch up on each other’s activities since their last in-person meeting in Lund in May 2025. All Work Packages presented their progress over the previous months and mapped out their next steps.
SOLO coordinator Carlos Guerra (University of Coimbra) gave much-awaited updates regarding the organisation of the Soils for Europe conference in 2026, and partners delved into dynamic discussions regarding the life and future of the project; from more practical things, such as planning concrete actions, to considering their vision of SOLO’s work and legacy.
The stakeholder days were a mixture of discussions and interactive activities, including a study visit. Stakeholders and partners were welcomed by Oliveira Soares in his livestock and cork farm in Alentejo, where he walked them around the land and shared his experience with regenerative soil practices.
The farm, which has been in Oliveira’s family for centuries and under his governance for 50 years now, is dedicated to practices prioritising soil health. One such example is that Soares has implemented a no-till policy on his land - a move he was initially warned against. Despite being told that no-tillage would lead to soil compaction from the cattle, eventually harming the farm, he was not dissuaded. What he found instead was quite the opposite: soil became healthier and more fertile. “Tillage in a climate like ours is dramatic for erosion”, he shared with his guests.
During the study visit, participants had many opportunities to walk through the land and discuss such approaches with Soares. Closing conversations raised questions of transferability, highlighting climate change as an important factor to consider - how can certain regenerative farming practices and approaches be transmitted to other farms and climates?
Beyond the study visit, stakeholders were involved in interactive activities across Think Tanks. They circled through roundtables, co-creating timelines for the mapped actions corresponding to those particular Think Tanks’ knowledge gaps and bottlenecks.
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Funded by the European Union under grant agreement No. 101091115, SOLO (Soils for Europe).
Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Commission. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.