Food security is an urgent problem today. Every day people starve; and it is not just a few. Still 800 million people have not enough food to survive and 2 billion people are lacking food security. Will there be enough food for all people in the future? To accommodate the nearly 8 billion people expected on earth by 2025 and to improve their diets, the world will have to double food production compared to current levels. Lessons of the Green Revolution of the 1960s introduced nevertheless serious doubt that existing trends will not bring us closer to realize the commitment that poverty levels and malnutrition will be halved by 2015. The intimate link between soil and food production is at the heart of human existence on earth. Issues such as environmental degradation, population growth, competition for land, overstressed agriculture and inadequate international food distribution raise some basic questions: What estimates can we expect of the increase in world population? Do the soils of the world have the potential to feed all of humanity? Which kind of agriculture can feed the expected increased population? What are the appropriate alternatives? Are these forms of agriculture sustainable and what is their specific role in sustainable use of soils and land management? What is the potential for food security given changing nutritional patterns in the North? What could be the solutions to food insecurity? A broad range of issues and perspectives is addressed in the articles of this volume, which are aimed at answering these questions. Soil emerges as one of the key factors affecting food security in the world. Sustainable use of soils and land management is one important part of the much-needed general turn to sustainable development. At the moment we are faced with a close link between human poverty, soil poverty and soil mismanagement, which results in malnourishment. But this linkage is not unavoidable. Soils may have the potential to feed people if solidarity is n