‘Low-Hanging Fruit’: Dr Rattan Lal on How Soil & Farming Can Help Save the Climate
Read the recent interview by ‘Columbus Underground with Dr Rattan Lal.
Dr Lal’s world revolves around soil. And he understands, perhaps better than anyone, that every person’s world revolves around soil. Everything we eat, each and every day, begins with soil. There is, said Lal, a “direct relationship between human wellbeing and health of the soil and the land where they live… The fact is when people are desperate, miserable and hungry, they transfer their misery to the land. And land reciprocates. There’s a direct relationship between the two.”
Dr Lal, professor of soil science and director of Ohio State University’s Carbon Management and Sequestration Center, is one of the most renowned soil experts in the world. In 2007, he was a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Though he is no longer part of the IPCC, Lal continues to work for international climate solutions with the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification.
“Right now agriculture globally, directly and indirectly, contributes for 30% of the total human-induced emissions”, Lal explains. Some soils in Asia and Africa, he said, have been cultivated for thousands of years, and between 75-80% of the soil carbon might have been lost. “Fossil fuels have been a source of carbon emissions only since the Industrial Revolution“, Lal pointed out, “but agriculture has been emitting carbon since it first began, about 12,000 years ago“.
By reforming farming and tillage practices around the world, soil can begin to reabsorb carbon from the atmosphere, which will lead to healthier soil as well as a healthier climate. But there are a few caveats. First, Lal made it clear that transforming soil into a carbon sink cannot negate the entirety of carbon emissions. Soil simply can’t absorb everything, but should be thought of as “part of a whole menu of things to be done.”
Read the full story ……….
[Thanks to member Amir Kassam, Moderator, FAOGlobal CA-CoP]
