ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the soil–human health–environment trinity, and how restoration of the soil health can simultaneously improve the resilience of humanity through improvement of the environment and functioning of nature. The specific objective of this chapter is to deliberate the impact of soil degradation caused by soil organic carbon depletion on the nutritional quality of crops and on human health. Indirectly, degraded soil can affect human health by producing nutrient-deficient food of low yield and aggravate both under and malnutrition. Deficiency of micronutrients in the degraded soils is an important factor impacting human health. The latter is aggravated by the emission of greenhouse gases from degraded soils of agroecosystems and increased by inappropriate use of inputs to mitigate the adverse effects of soil degradation. The strategy is to advance human nutrition and alleviate the deficiency of micronutrients along with protein and macronutrients in developing countries without degrading soil resources.
