Is Soil Health the Key to Fighting Climate Change?

The Role of Agriculture 

Recently, agriculture has started to become a tool that can be used to fight climate change. Since plants remove (at least some) carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, the general idea behind this idea is that if we can sustainably plane enough crops, we should theoretically be able to remove carbon dioxide and simultaneously produce crops to meet the ever-growing demand for food. Soil is integral to this process, because the quality of soil a plant is grown in can directly affect the crop’s yield, growth time, quality, and efficiency. The tricky thing about this is that soil is a finite resource, although it may seem abundant, and as we use more soil, we have less to use in the future. As of 2024, ⅓ of the world’s soil has been degraded, leaving us with a deficit between the amount of crops that need to be planted and the amount of healthy, fertile soil we have to make that happen. The lack of quality soil has rendered a major threat to global food security, in addition to barring our ability to use natural carbon sequestration from crops to potentially reverse climate change. 

Can we get more Healthy Soil? 

Although humans have used up a lot of Earth’s naturally fertile soil, we have plenty of old and degraded soil to work with. Unfortunately, that old soil doesn’t seem too useful at the moment. Studies estimate that we are currently losing soil 50-100 times faster than we are able to repair old degraded soil, since the natural restoration process of soil currently takes around 1,000 years. Although there are current scientific limitations on creating more healthy soil that have not been resolved yet, there are steps that the agriculture industry can take to ensure that the healthy soil that we do have doesn’t get stripped of its nutrients and minerals by human activities. For example, the process of adding essential nutrients into soil while in use can help plant health and help maintain the soil’s usefulness, if done correctly. Customization is key to this, meaning that specific nutrients need to be added to specific soil at specific times in order to reap the benefits. Technology for this process is also increasing right now, including remote sensing and AI that can tell farmers where and when to add nutrients to their soil to maintain its condition. There are also organizations such as the 4 per 1000 initiative who raise awareness about practices such as conservation agriculture, agroecology, agroforestry, sustainable landscape management, and more. The 4 per 1000 initiative is named from a calculation that scientists have made that says that if the amount of carbon in the top 30-40 cm of soil increased by 0.4%, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would be significantly decreased. All of the listed practices would assist that initiative. 

How does Healthy Soil Impact Health?

Now that it has been established that healthy soil could be key to carbon sequestration, it must be addressed how this can also improve the health of people in need. The most obvious way that healthy soil would improve the lives of people is by growing higher yield and more efficient crops. America is currently in an agricultural crisis, seeing the demand for food rise quickly while the amount of farms has declined by 141,733 in the last 5 years. While soil health may not fully solve other problems in the agriculture industry, such as labor shortages, it will certainly make it easier to grow more food. Healthy soil is also an important factor in the development and production of medications. In fact, about 40% of prescription drugs are derived from soil, including antibiotics that have capabilities to produce anticancer and antiparasitic drugs. If we were to ensure that the soil on Earth remained as healthy as possible, we could continue to use this resource for the purpose of medicine. However, if we were to overuse our soil and strip it of its natural resources, it wouldn’t be as useful. Ultimately, soil has many surprising uses, and if we use it strategically, it could be instrumental in the removal of greenhouse gasses. 

Works Cited

Fabino, Alexander, et al. “America Has a Farming Crisis.” Newsweek, 12 March 2024, https://www.newsweek.com/us-farming-crisis-h2a-visa-reform-labor-shortage-1878530. Accessed 2024.

Food and Agriculture Team (Sierra Club). “Soil Health and Climate Change.” Sierra Club Grassroots Network, https://www.sierraclub.org/grassroots-network/food-agriculture/soil-health-and-climate-change#gsc.tab=0. Accessed 2024.

The World Economic Forum. “Ground zero: why soil health is integral to beating climate change.” The World Economic Forum, 22 November 2024, https://www.weforum.org/stories/2024/11/soil-climate-change-sustainable-agriculture/. Accessed 2024.

The World Economic Forum. “6 surprising ways soil and human health are linked.” The World Economic Forum, 2 October 2024, https://www.weforum.org/stories/2024/10/soil-health-human-health-connection/. Accessed 2024.

Zurich. “Why soil is important to life on Earth – and helps fight climate change.” Zurich Insurance, 11 November 2024, https://www.zurich.com/media/magazine/2021/how-soil-supports-life-on-earth-and-could-help-win-the-fight-against-climate-change. Accessed 2024.