On World Soil Day, Agroecology Europe shares the results of its active involvement within the Horizon Europe HuMUS project.
On Friday, 21 November 2025, 100 people gathered in Brussels at the European Committee of the Regions to celebrate the end of the three-year project Healthy Municipal Soils (HuMUS). The HuMUS final conference was organised by the project coordinator ANCI Toscana and by the Agroecology Europe team, as partner leading the project’s communication and dissemination efforts. The event marked a crucial point for the HuMUS project, soon coming to an end. The focus of the project is to foster holistic and participatory soil health management, looking at all types of soil and land use, including − but not limited to − agricultural soil.
Over the course of the past three years, the Agroecology Europe Association has been leading the Communication & Dissemination Work Package of the project, promoting its main activities, training programmes, events, funding opportunities and results across various channels. One of the Association’s main responsibilities was to organise the final conference, which was a resounding success.
Under the title “Participatory governance for Soil Health quality management: The legacy of the HuMUS project”, we were delighted to welcome around 100 stakeholders, including 25 speakers and numerous representatives of the 34 HuMUS pilots, showcased through 11 posters that illustrated the rich diversity and impact of the project’s work across and beyond Europe.
Participation from the beginning to the end
The HuMUS Final Conference brought together policymakers, soil stewards, municipalities, regional authorities, researchers, farmers, urban planners, and civil society to share knowledge and outcomes from the three-year Horizon Europe project HuMUS. To ensure the smooth implementation of the event, Agroecology Europe’s Communication & Policy Officer Anna Frosini coordinated the agenda and handled outreach to relevant stakeholders.
The conference highlighted the value of participatory governance for soil health. Speakers and participants also identified practical and policy-level bottlenecks in funding, regulation, and implementation. In particular, they explored how to scale and replicate the HuMUS methodology, which empowers local and regional communities to co-develop soil solutions adapted to their specific territorial contexts.
Opening remarks by Anna Frosini, Communication & Policy Officer at Agroecology Europe. © Agroecology Europe
The day offered a dynamic mix of formats, fostering dialogue and knowledge exchange, including keynote speeches from EU officials and soil policy experts, panel discussions featuring pilot sites and regional success stories, interactive Q&A sessions and the poster exhibition showcasing project activities and outcomes.
A real highlight of the day was the Soil Sommelier experience, offered by Yasmine Cathell, representing the project Medi-Terra (Cilento, Italy), a pilot from the project’s Open Call. Participants had the opportunity to engage in the assessment of soil health through olfactory perception, learning how to recognise indicators of soil health or lack thereof) among different soil samples.
Agroecology Europe’s contribution to the project
From 2023 to 2025, Agroecology Europe has dedicated a consistent part of its efforts to communicating about and disseminating the work of the HuMUS project, contributing the agroecological perspective to the project’s scope. This meant – among others – creating and implementing the project’s communication plan and dissemination campaigns concerning the Open Call and the final conference. The Association also curated and led the three webinars held by HuMUS, as well as the three informative videos about the project’s pilots, Open Call application procedure and final results.
Dr. Paola Migliorini presenting the HuMUS Territorial Management Agreements at the final conference in Brussels © Agroecology Europe
Paola Migliorini, founding member of Agroecology Europe and Associate Professor of Agronomy and Crop Production at the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo (UNISG), has also been actively engaged with her team in the project. Together with the University of Granada, UNISG co-created the methodology for the establishment of the Territorial Management Agreements, laying the foundation for long-term participatory governance rooted in soil care.
“Territorial Management Agreements are not something that ends with the project. Not at all. They are probably the starting point – now we have to understand how to carry on the work. For instance, we will continue to carry out the collection of signatures for the Territorial Management Agreements.”
Paola Migliorini, UNISG
The HuMUS effect: a long-lasting impact on participatory soil health management
As highlighted several times throughout the conference, HuMUS has kick-started a transformation in local soil governance, demonstrating how participatory, inclusive and replicable approaches can pave the way toward healthier soils and stronger communities. Over the last three years (2023-2025), HuMUS has involved 18 partners from 8 European countries, 14 internal pilots and 20 external pilots, selected via a Financial Support for Third Parties (FSTP) call, bringing the final number of Member States and Associated Countries involved to 16.
The conference demonstrated how, in supporting the EU Mission “A Soil Deal for Europe”, HuMUS established constructive, multi-actor dialogues to co-dentify soil problems and co-develop solutions at the municipal or regional level, adopting a multi-actor participatory approach. In three years, the HuMUS consortium engaged more than 50,000 stakeholders through awareness-raising, capacity building, and participatory activities, organising more than 220 events.
The main innovation brought about in the HuMUS pilots has been the so-called Territorial Management Agreement (TMA), a formal, co-created pact between various regional and local stakeholders. Partners collected more than 300 signatures for the Territorial Management Agreements. This represents a useful written tool to empower local entities to engage with local stakeholders, identify problems, and co-create short, medium and long-term solutions.
Territorial Management Agreement signing in the Calenzano and Val Varaita pilots, Italy.
TMAs provide public authorities and stakeholders involved in the participatory process with an important document that gathers objectives and solutions to be implemented. This represents a solid starting point for developing local initiatives and projects to be implemented or integrated into local and regional strategies, plans and programmes.
Other significant results presented at the conference include a Training Programme for Soil Stewards, trained civil servants or community members who actively promote and facilitate local soil health dialogues and initiatives. The programme has been attended by than 220 participants from 26 countries in the 5 continents so far.
Looking at the future: The HuMUS legacy
Overall, the HuMUS methodology is a replicable tool for actor engagement and participatory governance, designed to foster dialogue and collaborative action on soil health. Project partners aim to facilitate the replication and transfer of the HuMUS good practice in additional local territories, to ensure that the HuMUS legacy continues to inspire and facilitate local action for collaborative soil health management.
As shared in the closing remarks by Sandra Heinzelmann, Project Advisor at European Research Executive Agency (REA): “HuMUS worked hard, with very dedicated members. The collaboration with other Mission Soil projects was also notable and very positive. HuMUS implemented what was promised – and even went beyond that. Be proud of that.”
This is only the beginning. The work continues, and – in the words of Astrid Hannes, Head of Projects at ERRIN and conference speaker, “We are making the HuMUS family become a generation – and hopefully many generations.”
Keep an eye on the HUMUS website for the last updates on project results, Territorial Management Agreements, and success stories emerging from the pilots, and sign up here to receive the last HuMUS newsletter.
We are grateful to ANCI Toscana for the smooth coordination and active leadership in this meaningful project. Agroecology Europe is proud to be part of the HuMUS legacy. Together, we can keep cultivating the future of participatory healthy soil governance, going beyond mere soil health restoration. Let’s keep connecting soil health with territorial land governance, looking at a holistic, multi-actor landscape level.