World Soil Day Champions an Untapped Resource to Solve the Climate Crisis

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/12/04/world-soil-day-champions-untapped-resource-solve-climate-crisis

by
Andrea Germanos

As UN climate talks in Paris hit their mid-way point, many are marking World Soil Day—and soil's untapped role into solving the climate crisis.

<snip>

It's what CFS and many other organizations, farmers, and organic advocates have stressed. Here's why: as a report from CFS's Cool Foods Campaign released in April stated, "cultivated soils globally have lost 50-70 percent of their original carbon content." But atmospheric CO2, which is fueling climate change, can be shifted into the soil where it's needed, providing numerous benefits. From Common Dreams:

Multiple factors have contributed to the problem, the report states: paving over land; converting grasslands to cropland; and agricultural practices that involve tillage and chemical inputs, which not only deprive soil of organic matter and rob it of the ability to store carbon but also contribute to flooding and erosion.

Healthy soils, in contrast, fed through organic agriculture practices, like polycultures, cover crops, and compost, give soil microbes the ability to store more CO2. Not only that, the report states, healthy soil can better weather both drought and floods because its structure allows it to act like a sponge. And healthy soil means better crop yields.

And as environmental activist and author Vandana Shiva wrote this year, research by her organization Navdanya "has shown that organic farming has increased carbon absorption by 55 per cent. International studies show that with two tonne per hectare of soil organic carbon, we can remove 10 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, which can reduce atmospheric pollution to 350 parts per million."

That's why Larry Kopald, co-founder and president of organization The Carbon Underground, heralded soil regeneration as "shovel-ready solution" to the climate crisis.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________

More at the link. Happy World Soil Day!
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/12/04/world-soil-day-champions-untapped-resource-solve-climate-crisis