Floods, riverbank erosion and wasted fertiliser: Where does Bangladesh stand in the global effort to save soil?

Every monsoon, farmers lose not only land but also the fertiliser they have applied: to flash floods in the Haor wetlands and to riverbank erosion on the Char islands. This week, soil scientists from around the world are meeting in China’s Yangling, China to discuss how to stop soil erosion.

The first annual meeting of the International Network on Soil Erosion (INSER) is being held from Oct 27-31. It is organised by the Land and Water Division of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), INSER and Northwest A&F University in Yangling, and runs both in person and online.

INSER began work in September 2025 as a technical network of FAO's Global Soil Partnership. According to the meeting programme, three working groups have been formed since then, and experts from 72 countries have joined its online technical meetings.

Discussions cover three areas: soil erosion measurement and mapping; soil and water conservation practices; and economic valuation, law and policy. The programme includes approval of a 2026–2027 work plan and an expert consultation on the Global Soil Erosion Map (GSERmap).

Field visits to experimental stations and long-term erosion-monitoring sites on the Loess Plateau are scheduled for Oct 30-31. The programme lists 57 oral presentations (nine in the high-level sessions and 48 in parallel sessions) and 26 posters. Presenters include researchers from at least 32 countries across Asia, Africa, Europe, the Americas and Australia.

On behalf of EcoSynth Solutions, I presented two research posters online in the Oct 29 poster session; the organisers had selected both in advance. The poster and parallel-session lists in the programme carry only one Bangladeshi name.

Both posters concern flood-prone farming in the Char and Haor regions. One proposes timing fertiliser application according to flood forecasts, so that floods do not wash the fertiliser away. The other proposes combining urea deep placement (UDP) with soil-erosion control practices.

Neither proposal comes from nowhere. In 2025, results of my field trials in Barishal and Jashore were presented as a poster at the virtual 10th anniversary meeting of the US-based Soil Health Institute (SHI). Over several seasons, the trials compared UDP, known in the field as guti urea, with broadcasting 150 kg of nitrogen per hectare in three splits.

In UDP, urea briquettes are placed 7–10cm deep in the soil, and 120kg of nitrogen per hectare was used. Nitrogen loss was 30–35 percent lower, nitrogen use efficiency was 25 percent higher, and rice yield rose by 18 percent with 20 percent less fertiliser. The poster also reported farmers' net income 18–20 percent higher, soil organic carbon 12.4 percent higher and soil microbial biomass carbon 9.7 percent higher.

Those trials, however, did not include flood forecasts or erosion control. The INSER posters propose adding both, and these proposals have not yet been tested in the field. The next step is a one-season pilot in selected Char and Haor areas, testing in farmers' fields how well UDP works when guided by flood forecasts, and measuring soil erosion.

In a delta country like Bangladesh, soil erosion, floods and fertiliser loss are not separate problems; they compound one another. Bringing this field experience to a global network could create space for Bangladesh in international research and funding discussions. The question is how far our research institutions, government and NGOs will engage in that conversation.

[Md Hasnain is a soil scientist and founder and principal consultant of EcoSynth Solutions]