Work on Global Soil Security

COLLEGE STATION, Texas (DTN) -- Soil scientists, researchers and foundations are working to draw attention to long-term global soil security challenges and to encourage producers to implement practices that reduce soil erosion and improve water quality.

Texas A&M University hosted the Global Soil Security Symposium this week to highlight the importance of protecting the productivity of global soils. The United Nations has designated 2015 as the International Year of Soils and the conference included speakers from 10 countries reporting on the state of global soils.

"I firmly believe a global approach to soil health is needed for our well-being," said Michael Jeffery, Australia's national advocate for soil health.

Jeffery and others hope global soil security becomes the focal point later this year when world leaders meet in France to discuss how to deal with greenhouse gas emissions and climate change.

Soil security revolves around main themes that are becoming more central to American agricultural productivity. Global population continues to grow, which is driving demand for more food. Yet the amount of arable land is shrinking by an average of 1% globally every year. In the U.S., about 41 million acres of rural land has been lost to urban sprawl over the last 30 years; approximately 14 million of those acres were considered prime crop land. Soil erosion remains a problem for farmers facing hotter temperatures and more weather volatility as climate changes.

The conference's lead organizer, Christine Morgan, a soil science professor at Texas A&M, noted a wide range of people are becoming more interested in soil health, but there are questions about how the topic continues to advance. She thinks grassroots efforts to protect soils are going to improve as farmers and landowners see more measurable reasons for management decisions oriented around improving soil health. She pointed to efforts such as Field to Market that are coalescing various groups around soil health.

"That's where the biggest advances are going to happen," she said.

Morgan noted scientists know what needs to be done. She believes work revolving around soil health will expand on the farm as people are rewarded for those practices.

Morgan added, "I'm hoping we make changes before a big catastrophe occurs."

Deputy Chief of Science and Technology at USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service Wayne Honeycutt noted the need to increase crop productivity also translates into greater demand for water. That requires boosting water-holding capacity of soils.

There is a nexus between soil health, water demands and water quality. Nationally, 78% of streams and rivers are classified as in fair or poor condition. When the carbon content in soil is increased, the water-holding capacity of the soil also increases. Most studies show that one of the best ways to increase carbon content is to reduce or eliminate soil tillage.

"We can say with pretty good assurance that we know how to increase the carbon in the soil," Honeycutt said.

No-till, combined with cover crops, builds resiliency in the cropping system. Honeycutt pointed to a survey following the 2012 drought showing corn farmers who grew cover crops produced an average of 114 bushels per acre compared to 103 bpa among those who did not.

NRCS has put greater emphasis on soil health in the last couple of years. The agency is developing a new soil health division headed by Bianca Moebius-Clune. She came out of academia, having spent 11 years at Cornell University where Moebius-Clune worked on the Adapt-N nitrogen management strategy for corn that has been embraced by some major seed and agronomy companies.

The soil health strategy at USDA highlights four basic management principles: minimize soil disturbance; maximize diversity of plants, inputs and animals; keep the soil covered; and maximize living roots.

"We know that it's really critical to incentivize our farmers to put these better management practices on the ground," Moebius-Clune said.

Moebius-Clune acknowledged there are regions and systems where producers cannot go all the way to no-till or it may not be economical to do that. But minimizing disturbance is a critical component of improving soil health, as well as keeping a shield on that soil, she said.

"The devil is in the details, but we need to keep our soils covered is the principle," she said.

NRCS is hiring and reassigning staff to create a soil-health division of 20 people who will be spread around the country and work with various state staffs.

One potential incentive is to offer a crop-insurance discount for soil-health practices. The Natural Resources Defense Council is in the initial stages of proposing a pilot project in as many as 30 states to provide discounts on crop insurance to farmers who plant cover crops. NRDC has hired an actuarial firm to look at the situation before putting together a proposal for USDA's Risk Management Agency to consider.

"Our idea is to do what we call a 'good-driver discount' in our analogy," said Lara Bryant, who works on agricultural issues for NRDC. "This could be implemented over the next three years and we are in the very beginning stages."

Paul Smith, a policy analyst with the Ontario, Canada, Ministry of Agriculture, said the economic rationale for implementing better conservation practices has to be at the center of the discussion.

"This is a fundamental argument to a farmer, ask why I should make these investments," Smith said. "If it makes sense from an economic point of view and from a soil health point of view, the arguments against it begin to fall away."

Thus, there's a growing understanding that the value of soil health needs to have some dollar benefits to go along with the conservation argument. Chuck Benbrook, a consultant on the Soil Renaissance project, noted there is essentially no dollar value given to measuring the economic benefits of soil-health practices.

"This has got to change in order to bring the kind of investment capital into the area that we all recognize is badly needed," Benbrook said.

Bill Buckner, president and CEO of the Noble Foundation, is spearheading the Soil Renaissance effort and looking to broaden that initiative. Noble recently announced a partnership with Texas A&M to form the Center for Private Lands Stewardship. Buckner stressed that efforts around soil health need to embrace a form of "free-market environmentalism" that avoids increased regulation of farmers.

"They shouldn't be told what to do, and at all cost, we must avoid government intervention and regulations," Buckner said.

Buckner instead wants the Soil Renaissance project to focus on helping farmers see the economic opportunities as well as identifying gaps in research that will expand conservation in agriculture. Asked to summarize his perspective on the three-day conference, Buckner said scientists need help explaining the importance of the mission.

"There's a collective understanding of the challenges that we have communicating up and down the line from international, national, state and local levels on health of our soils in this context around the world," Buckner said. "But there's also a lot of passion and understanding about the state of soil health, but we lack standards globally. We have a lot of work to do to elevate that, and it's going to take a collective effort in research to verify, and data management. We heard a lot here that managing all of this data is going to be challenging."

People don't want to ring alarm bells because soils can be improved and protected if the work is put into it, Buckner said.

Chris Clayton can be reached at Chris.Clayton@dtn.com

Follow him on Twitter @ChrisClaytonDTN

(AG/CZ)

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