The Soil Carbon Solution

It is the ultimate spill-over community benefit arising from RDC research: carbon sequestration in agricultural soils. The world is waking up to the fact that limiting future emissions will not be enough to avoid catastrophe. “The science now tells us that it will be next to impossible for nations to achieve the scale of reductions required in sufficient time to avoid dangerous climate change unless we also remove carbon from the atmosphere and store it in vegetation and soils.” The Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists believes: “The power of terrestrial carbon to contribute to the climate change solution is profound.”*
Awareness of the need for a short term fix for Climate Change is growing. The ‘vintage’ CO2 already in the atmosphere that is doing all the damage cannot be captured by “clean coal” technology and immobilized by geosequestration, the solutions favoured by the Australian and US Governments. Nor is it the CO2 that will be avoided when power is generated by solar or wind turbines or hot rocks or nuclear power.
The damage is being done by GHG that can’t be captured at source or substituted. It has to be scrubbed out of the atmosphere by the only means possible: the natural processes that lock carbon up in trees and soils. PHOTOSYNTHESIS.
Professor Rattan Lal, the world’s leading soil carbon research scientist and IPCC lead author: “Carbon sequestration in soil and vegetation is a bridge to the future. It buys us time while alternatives to fossil fuel take effect.”** Dr Tim Flannery, Chairman of the Copenhagen Climate Council, says soil is “the fastest way of sequestering carbon… The strongest prospect of very large draw-down of atmospheric carbon lies in changes to our global agriculture and forestry practices," he says. He acknowledges capacity of the 4 billion hectares of rangeland. Increase the soil carbon in ‘world’s dry rangelands by a mere 2 per cent… we could pull down around 880 gigatonnes of carbon from the atmosphere.” ***
The crisis of our soils is urgent. The crisis of Climate Change is urgent. The crisis of farm finances is urgent. The crisis of rural communities is urgent. The urgency of the need for widespread action by farmers makes the financial incentive essential to speed uptake.
Australian and international security bodies predict 40 million climate change refugees could be moving in our area within 50 years.
The world will need to grow twice as much food in 50 years’ time with the same amount of soil and the same amount of water.
At the same time, the Food & Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, the World Bank, the USA, the EU and food and farming organizations believe Agriculture has a special role to play in that the world’s agricultural soils have the capacity to draw down the equivalent of 50ppm by 2100**** – stalling the process of Climate Change long enough for alternative sources of energy to reach critical mass.

* Optimising Carbon in The Landscape, October 2009
** Rattan Lal is director of Ohio State University's Carbon Management and Sequestration Centre, professor with the School of Environment and Natural Resources, and recipient of the 2006 Liebig Applied Soil Science Award. Lal has spent 18 years of his service with Ohio State's Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center (OARDC) studying carbon sequestration. In 2005, Lal was the recipient of the Norman Borlaug Award, another international honor for his contribution to the sustainable management of soil and natural resources, specifically carbon sequestration and global food security. He has received over 14 other distinguished awards and has authored, reviewed and edited over 1,000 publications and journal articles throughout his career.
*** Flannery, Tim, “Now Or Never”, Black inc., 2009
**** Rattan Lal, “The Potential for Soil Carbon Sequestration” in Agriculture and Climate Change: An Agenda for Negotiation in Copenhagen, International Food Policy Research Institute, http://www.ifpri.org/2020/focus/focus16.asp.