5. Conclusion

Soil fauna has become an indispensable tool for understanding soil processes. As we have seen, major scientific advances have been made over the last twenty years, enabling us to use this fauna to help our society preserve soils for future generations.

This use can only come at the same time as a growing national and international awareness of the urgent need to preserve soils, particularly agricultural soils, whose condition today sometimes calls into question their primary capacity to produce biomass. Indeed, beyond the technical challenge, which will be overcome, it is the political choices that will be decisive: what place should be given to "ordinary" soil biodiversity, which makes these soils work and enables them to produce healthy food in large quantities? What choices should be made to help the agricultural world make the necessary changes so that sustainable...