ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the importance of soil and its sustainable management to advance global peace and human well-being through the elimination of famines and pandemics. Chronological records of famines since 1860 are presented by the World Peace Foundation and vividly described by Hasell and Roser. Urbanization, the attendant demographic changes can strongly increase vulnerability of human beings to pandemics such as COVID-19. The complex and highly interactive issues of food/nutritional security, rapid urbanization, and high mobility of the population across continents are strongly confounded by the daunting challenges posed by the COVID-19. Transformation of epidemics faced by humanity since the evolution of Homo sapiens to the pandemics since the 1950s is attributed to high mobility and rapid urbanization. Almost all of this annual population growth of 70 million is happening in the less developed countries of Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, where the soil resources are already degraded, water resources are finite, there is a large prevalence of undernourished, malnourished people.
