Healthy soils underpin food production, climate resilience and wider ecosystem functioning, yet more than 60% of European soils are considered degraded. The period around 2027 brings two important opportunities to reshape the relationship between soil science, policy and practice. First, the forthcoming reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) for the post-2027 period creates an opportunity to strengthen incentives for sustainable soil management. Second, the EU Mission Soil will be moving from experimentation towards the wider implementation and upscaling of Living Labs, accelerating the co-production and application of knowledge on sustainable soil management.

Realising the potential of these initiatives will depend on much more than generating new scientific evidence. Effective soil stewardship requires sustained exchange between scientists, policymakers, farmers, advisers and the wider agri-food sector. Yet these relationships are often fragmented by differences in language, priorities, evidence, experience and perceptions of what constitutes credible knowledge.

This session will examine how knowledge about soils is produced, interpreted, exchanged and acted upon across this diverse community. It will explore how soil scientists can better understand the knowledge needs, perspectives and decision-making contexts of different stakeholders, while recognising farmers, practitioners and policymakers as producers of knowledge in their own right.

We invite participants from across the knowledge chain to come together to ask a deceptively simple question: how do we know what we know? Through dialogue across disciplines and sectors, the session aims to identify practical ways to strengthen bidirectional knowledge exchange and build a more collaborative pathway towards sustainable European soils.