Humanity cannot do without agriculture since the activity is the main source of food, a basic right of all people that depends on the existence of healthy soils to produce, assured Rattan Lal, a scientist considered the greatest global authority in environmental sciences. soil and Special Envoy of the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) to COP27, the UN Conference of the Parties, the world’s most important annual meeting on climate action.
The soil can also become a sink for atmospheric carbon and limit global warming, for which it is necessary to turn science into action, said Lal, 2020 World Food Prize Laureate.
“We hope that COP27 will help us achieve this,” further stated the Director of the Ohio State University Carbon Management and Sequestration Center (C-MASC) and IICA Goodwill Ambassador.
At the next COP27 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Rattan Lal will lead, together with the Director General of IICA, Manuel Otero, the support of this organization for the efforts that the countries of the Americas will carry out to raise the voice of agriculture on the global stage of climate discussions.
“Farmers around the world are the greatest stewards of the land. There are more than 500 million small producers, so they are the major implements of the concept of how to make agriculture a solution to climate change. Our policies at all levels, district, county, state, national, regional and international must be pro-farmer, pro-agriculture and pro-nature,” said Rattan Lal.
IICA’s Special Envoy to COP27 participated in Costa Rica in September in the meeting in which the Ministers of Agriculture of the Americas agreed on messages to take to COP27, focused on the relevance of the agricultural sector and the need for its role in global efforts for adaptation, mitigation and resilience to climate change.
“The concept I propose is to farm carbon. So farmers, land managers, ranchers and those who manage plantations can grow carbon in the land, in the trees and in the soil and be rewarded. In the same way that they can sell milk, poultry, beef, corn and soybeans, they should also be able to sell carbon, so that it becomes a commodity, “added the scientist.
“Can the carbon commodity in the soil be given a price that is fair, transparent and directed at the farmer? Most of the money allocated to that price should actually go to farmers. That would help us translate science into action and make agriculture the solution to climate change,” he said.