World Food Prize Winner Rattan Lal Champions Soil Health Act
World Food Prize 2020 winner and renowned soil scientist Professor Rattan Lal serves as director of the Rattan Lal Center for Carbon Management and Sequestration at The Ohio State University. Dr. Lal has been advocating for healthy and productive soil for much of his life. HJIFEP research director Dinshaw Dadachanji sat down with Dr. Lal for an interview, excerpts from which follow:
Earth & I: Dr. Lal, before we get into soil science and your advocacy for a Soil Health Act, could you tell us a bit about yourself?
Rattan Lal: I have been working in agriculture since graduating from Ohio State University (OSU) with a PhD in 1968.
Ohio State University had given my name to the Rockefeller Foundation with whom I had previously worked in India. They were developing facilities in the Philippines, India, Mexico, and Nigeria.
In 1969, I accepted the opportunity to work at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) in Ibadan, Nigeria, where I worked for 18 years before coming back to OSU in 1987.
That opened up a great opportunity for me to become a soil scientist and study problems in developing countries. I had the opportunity to travel to countries in Southeast Asia, like Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines; to almost all countries in Africa; South America, including Brazil and Argentina; and Central America, Mexico, and other countries.
I worked there [at IITA] for 18 years and became very familiar with the soils, problems, and climates of developing countries as a whole. It was God's gift that I had that opportunity, having come from a village in an isolated environment. Here, I was exposed to the entire world.
Working on soils to make them productive became my mission, and I continued that mission upon returning to Ohio State in 1987. The goal was how to make agriculture not only good enough for food and nutritional security but also for climate security.
That was a big, unique opportunity—that agriculture can be a part of the solution!
Earth & I: How would you describe healthy soil?
Rattan Lal: Scientists refer to soil health as its capacity to provide ecosystem services, such as food and nutritional quality, water filtration, and moderation of climate. These critical ecosystem services really come from soil.
Then the question as a scientist is how to determine that quality. Soil organic matter content is the key, like for human health, you would look at body temperature, blood pressure, and so forth.
The climate is a control factor at the heart of soil health.
In soil, it is all organic matter content and its ability to hold water and nutrients, and its ability to grow plants. And that's why the center where I'm working is a carbon sequestration center. The climate is a control factor of soil organic matter content and it is at the heart of soil health.
Carbon sequestration is a mechanism to improve, protect, and sustain soil health. The reason soils in Africa have bypassed the green revolution is because they did not have fertilizer and irrigation, and the soil organic matter content was so depleted—at less than 0.5% in the root zone, where it should be 2 to 3 %. Therefore, the productivity of soils in Africa without fertilizer is extremely low.
In India and Mexico, where the green revolution happened, they had access to rain (or irrigation) and fertilizers. The soil was in poor health, so they used fertilizer and doubled or tripled their production. But in the long run, we cannot continue dumping fertilizer. We must restore soil health.
Earth & I: You mentioned often that there is a Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act here in the United States. However, we do not have a Soil Health Act yet, except in New York State, which recently passed the Soil Health Act. Could you say something about that?
Rattan Lal: I'm really happy that New York State has now a New York Soil Health and Climate Resiliency Act and related legislation. I think it would serve as a role model for all states to follow, and hopefully the US Senate and Congress will follow a similar path of rewarding farmers for restoring soil organic matter content at US$50 per credit (one metric ton of CO2 equivalent). Such payment for ecosystem services would motivate farmers and ranchers, who are the biggest stewards of soil, to transform agriculture from a problem into a solution for restoring the environment and advancing food, nutrition and climate security.
The reason I think there was a Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act was because air and water are easy to see. Air that is hazy, dusty, or smoky, as well as water that is muddy and polluted, are easy to see, but people do not see that clean air and clean water are, in fact, dependent on healthy soil.
That link is not obvious. That is where there is a social disconnect.
Clean air and clean water, as well as climate ... depends on the ability of the soil to be a sink of atmospheric CO2.
From that point of view, there is [also] a political disconnect. Clean air and clean water, as well as climate from that point of view, depends on the ability of the soil to be a sink of atmospheric CO2. That link is not easy to understand, because even now when you talk to people about soil as a potential solution to climate change, they always talk about fossil fuels as an issue since they do not see the link.
The fact is that ever since agriculture began, going back 10,000 years ago, it and soil have been sources of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. As of today, soil and land that has been used for agriculture have contributed more than 550 gigatons of carbon into the atmosphere. Fossil fuels [used] between 1750 and now have also contributed about 450 gigatons.
Earth & I: What features for the Soil Health Act would be most important?
Rattan Lal: So, a soil health act would encourage farmers to mitigate and adapt to climate change, conserve, purify, and denature pollutants from water, and improve the activity and species diversity of the land.
I think there's a bright future, and that eventually people will realize it. I must say that the Ohio General Assembly invited me to talk to them a few years ago; I briefly explained that we need an Ohio Soil Act or Soil Health Act. I've been invited [to speak] by the Columbus (Ohio) City Council. They said we want to talk to you and learn what the city can do to improve urban land, so that came as a surprise to me. So, you never know whether [or not] the new government will consider this issue.
Sometimes, people will go along with this and change their mind, but I'm convinced that it will happen—it's a matter of time. I'm optimistic that there will be a federal soil health act eventually.
The government policymakers realized the importance of air, water, soil, and biodiversity. They are four components of the environment that go together. Biodiversity, air, and water—[and] their foundation is soil.
Now Europe is doing something like that. In Germany, there is the Federal Soil Protection Act. It is a soil health act that rewards farmers for following legislation. I think it will happen in the US as well. [Soil protection in Germany is carried out at many levels. The federal government lays down the legal frameworks, and the regional states implement them.]
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