Down-to-Earth Climate Change Strategy

  The Center for Food Safety’s Cool Foods Campaign report Soil & Carbon: Soil Solutions to Climate Problems maintains that it’s possible to take atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) that fuels climate change and put it back into the soil, where much of it was once a solid mineral. There’s too much carbon in the atmosphere and the oceans, but not enough stable carbon in the ground supporting healthy soils.

Cultivated soils globally have lost 50 to 70 percent of their original carbon content through paving, converting grasslands to cropland and agricultural practices that rob soil of organic matter and its ability to store carbon, making it more susceptible to flooding and erosion. Healthy soils—fed through organic agriculture practices like polycultures, cover crops and compost—give soil microbes the ability to store more CO2 and withstand drought and floods better, because revitalized soil structure allows it to act like a sponge.

The report concludes, “Rebuilding soil carbon is a zero-risk, low-cost proposition. It has universal application and we already know how to do it.”