(gentle music)
- Soil is the basis of terrestrial life.
All terrestrial life.
Every living things on the planet
depends on soil.
And yet this material, which is hidden
beneath the surface of the Earth, is under-appreciated.
Not recognized.
- Dr. Lal is very interested
in knowing how agriculture can be sustainable
and what practices can be shown are not sustainable.
- So what we have been trying to do is see
if we can restore the health of the soil.
- If you raise the soil quality in the world,
you've raised food for people.
We're gonna have nine billion people
in the foreseeable future.
Soil is what's gonna...
(laughs)
Soil is everything.
(crickets chirping)
- Here's the cover crop that you want.
These are radishes
and they're planted,
they put a big root down in the ground about that big
and about that deep, that break up the soil.
- No-till farming is, in a simple word,
"plow-less" agriculture.
Do not plow the land.
Plowing was necessary because of weed control.
But now we low control weed by other methods
other than plowing.
(tractor engine rumbles)
- The cobs and the fodder are back on the ground.
I want you look to see that's,
there's a complete ground cover.
What in today's atmosphere,
with the world thinking about climate change,
Dr. Lal is really the guru of carbon sequestration.
And carbon sequestration is the low-hanging fruit
that we could get, we can store carbon in the ground,
prevent it from going in the atmosphere,
and improve soil productivity
and or food production for the world.
- At the same time, we have younger generation
getting education in that.
You know, I feel very privileged.
I had 112 students so far,
175 visiting scholars,
56 postdoctorate fellow,
350 people from around the world.
So they are ambassadors,
not only of this site, what we are doing.
But also the Ohio State University.
They carry that Ohio State flag with them
wherever they go.
(stem cracking)
(leaves rustling)
- So right here, we just harvested
a one square meter plot
for the corn.
And we're gonna quantify the total fresh weight
of the samples,
and then, later on, quantify the amount of grain
and biomass yield for that one square meter.
- Plants are roughly 50% carbon,
and so you can take the yield of a crop, say corn,
and you can translate that to carbon
and determine how much carbon is gonna be in the soil.
Once we have these yields we can translate that to carbon,
feed it into the model.
At this point, the experiment started in Hoytville
and no-till was implemented
and you can see that carbon follows a different trajectory.
Look at the difference in these treatments.
If we can do no-till and we can have better yields
and better soil health,
then that's an argument to put forward to farmers
to say, "You know what, you really should look at this
"and consider this."
'Cause it's not only helping your bottom line,
it's helping the people you feed.
So, it's a win-win.
- It's a great example, to me, of what is so important
about science and what's important about the best science,
when you make discoveries that change the way
the world's experts in your field think
about the work that they do.
And that is what Dr. Lal has done.
(soft organ music)
- As long as you are consuming the natural resources,
food, water, elements,
coming from the soil,
you owe it to soil to put something back,
to give something back,
whatever you can.
Otherwise, we have no right to eat.
(laughs)
- We, as a human society,
we think about short-term gains,
short-term profit, more than long-term sustainability.
That challenge is a motivator.
It's a driving force.
If that's what drives me to travel,
even a day after I come from one place I'll go
to another place, because I think it's important
that I convey that message to policymakers,
to heads of states.
Just a message that the life depends on soil.
That the human survival depends on soil.
That's the challenge, that's the driving force.
That is something that is never-ending.
It'll continue long after I'm gone.