Carbon Capture: Digest #1

Dr. Lal was delighted to receive an invitation to speak at the 78a SOEA Conference: Official Week of Engineering and Agriculture with CONFEA/CREA (Federal Council of Engineering and Agronomy) in Porto Alegre, Brazil, on August 10, 2023. His presentation titled Carbon Sequestration – Enabling Brazilian Agriculture to Foster Global Sustainability resonated deeply with the 5000-strong audience in attendance. During his talk, Dr. Lal praised Brazil's remarkable feat of becoming the world's leading food exporter.

Dr. Klaus Lorenz joined more than 350 representatives from key industries across Ohio who gathered from July 26-27 for the 2023 SP Innovation Summit held at The Ohio State University by the Supplier’s Partnership for the Environment. As a featured speaker in the opening plenary session, Dr. Lorenz presented "Research, Innovations and Breakthroughs in Carbon Sequestration and Management Practices." 

The CFAES Rattan Lal Center for Carbon Management and Sequestration are excited to welcome three additions to our staff: Researchers Prof. João Carlos Moraes Sá and Dr. Sandhya Karki, and Communications Specialist Maggie Willis. They look forward to bringing their expertise to the projects here at the Lal Carbon Center.

Dr. Nancy Loria is working on assessing the suitability of portable handheld device to monitor soil organic carbon under farm conditions, in collaboration with Microsoft. Their approach combines Wi-Fi signals and field images to develop a soil carbon sensing method.

In this podcast featuring Dr. Rattan Lal and our dear colleague Dave Brandt, Now at Ohio State explores the following questions: can caring for the soil beneath our feet improve crop yields, sustainability and overall earth health? In this episode, we talk with two experts about no-till farming practices. They discuss the pros and cons of no-till farming and how these methods are reshaping the health and quality of crops but also the health and quality of the soil itself.            

By Don Reicosky, David Brandt, Randall Reeder and Rattan Lal

Could the catastrophic dust storm along I-55 in Illinois have been prevented? Yes! If the farmland had been in continuous no-till with cover crops there would have been no dust. No wrecks. No deaths. No injuries. No drivers upset because the main highway from Chicago to St. Louis was shut down for almost 24 hours. The tragedy of the infamous Dust Bowl era of 1930s was repeated on I-55 in the heart of the U.S. Corn Belt.