On 9 October 2025, the Community of Municipalities of the Val de Drôme (CCVD) and the partners of the Solvi’Terra project brought together local stakeholders for a morning of discussions devoted to the restitution of the soil health strategy and the presentation of the first version of an action plan.
This meeting marked the third stage of a co-construction process that began in December 2024.
A collective project for more resilient soils
Funded by the Horizon Europe programme and working under the project GOV4ALL, Solvi’Terra – Living Soils in the Drôme Valley is co-led by FiBL France, the CCVD, the GRAB, the Drôme Chamber of Agriculture and Solagro, in conjunction with four Mediterranean partner territories in Greece and Spain.
The project aims to answer major questions for the agricultural future of the territory:
- How can we support agricultural practices and strengthen soil resilience to climate change?
- What levers can be used to preserve and restore the biological and physical fertility of soils?
- How can soil health be made a tool for regional planning and decision-making?
Three workshops to build a shared strategy
- Workshop 1 – December 2024: launch of the project and mobilization of local stakeholders.
- Workshop 2 – April 2025: identification and prioritization of issues related to soil health.
- Workshop 3 – October 2025: presentation and discussions on the local soil health strategy and its action plan.
Collective feedback on the Val de Drôme soil health strategy and the associated action plan
The morning began with the presentation of the soil health strategy and its action plan developed from the previous workshops and interviews. This strategy is entitled “Reconsidering agricultural soils as pillars of the resilience of agricultural and food systems in the Drôme Valley”. The exchanges in small groups made it possible to collect rich and constructive feedback.
Highlights include:
- These are major issues for the territory: improving the structure and capacity of the soil to retain water, territorial autonomy in terms of amendment and fertility, and better knowledge of the soil.
- Several structures present supported the strategy as a whole, providing comments to refine certain axes of the action plan. For example, it has been reported that some actions require more detail on the process to achieve the said action (e.g. characterization of amendment products, mobilization of existing data)
- Some shortcomings have been noted: artificialisation, erosion, regulatory frameworks, identification of existing facilities, avoiding the degradation of current soils, etc.
- The challenge of popularizing soil health among elected officials and the general public has often come up, to inform the newly elected officials who will take office after the 2026 municipal elections and to strengthen the consideration of soil quality in local public policies.
- Finally, several actors stressed the need for a clear path of fundings, to ensure that the resources go to the farmers involved in the transition.
The strategy presented and its action plan will be reviewed in the coming months to integrate this feedback, and feed into the action sheets that will allow the implementation of this strategy.
Imagining solutions around soil health on a regional scale
In the second part of the morning, the participants were invited to reflect in a more operational way on the solutions to be developed within the framework of Solvi’Terra and more broadly to achieve the objectives identified in the soil health strategy of the Val de Drôme. The objective: to react to proposals for solutions that will ultimately support the local agroecological transition.
The solutions identified during the territorial consultation were presented and discussed around five themes:
- Organic Waste Management
- “Systems Transition” Service for Economic Operators
- Territorial autonomy in plant cover
- Soil conservation and long-term fertility
- Legume sectors
For these 5 themes, the types of solutions discussed were services to be developed (spreading of organic matter, provision of seedlings, technical advice, etc.), the need for applied research, logistical organization and the necessary equipment (seed sorters, seed storage, OM transport, etc.), as well as financial and economic levers at the level of the sectors.
The exchanges highlighted, for example:
- The potential of departmental innovation CUMAs to test new materials related to agroecology
- Logistical obstacles to the transport of organic matter between farms, requiring new shared solutions
- The importance of articulating existing mechanisms (PTGE, SAGE, PAPI, SCOT) to strengthen the coherence of actions in the territory
- The need for adapted, direct and secure funding to enable farmers to test new practices.
Future workshops will be organised as part of Solvi’Terra in 2026 to continue the process underway, and to consult the territory’s stakeholders at key moments. If you have any questions, please write an email to info@solviterra.fr