Soil covers the Earth in a thin layer, accounting for just one ten-millionth of the Earth’s radius (Kopittke et al., 2024). Soil provides 99% of the food that sustains human nutrition and also supplies medicines courtesy of medicinal wild herbs and plants, as well as antibiotics derived from soil microorganisms (Kopittke et al., 2024; Zhang et al., 2024). Soil also provides diverse ecosystem services that sustain healthy people on a healthy planet. The principal soil ecosystem services are biomass production, carbon pool regulation and provision of habitat to 25% of the Earth’s biodiversity, in addition to nutrient and water cycling upon which terrestrial systems depend. There is also a growing sense that healthy soils self-regulate their biological activity and either constrain the growth of pathogens or reduce their disease-causing effects, such as in suppressive soils, which provide an infection-free environment for seeds to germinate, establish and grow (Sahu et al., 2019). The general consensus is that a healthy soil has a continued ability to provide these essential ecosystem functions for plants, animals and humans. Furthermore, the notion of soil health connects soil science and agriculture to land use policy, considering stakeholder requirements and sustainable supply chain management (Lehmann et al., 2020). Since healthy soil has a strong positive relationship with crop yields, soil health is a vital measure of our ability to feed the world’s population.