DES MOINES, Iowa: The World Food Prize – usually likened to being the “Nobel for Agriculture” was awarded to Rattan Lal, an Indian-American soil scientist.
Lal earned the 2020 award for his research which led to improved food [ihc-hide-content ihc_mb_type=”show” ihc_mb_who=”2,3,5″ ihc_mb_template=”1″ ] production and a better understanding of how atmospheric carbon can be held in the soil to help combat climate change
Lal is a professor of soil science at Ohio State University and the founding director of its Carbon Management and Sequestration Center.
He was announced as the 2020 winner during an online ceremony hosted in Des Moines on Thursday.
According to the citation, Lal’s research has demonstrated how healthy soils result in higher crop yields, while requiring less land, chemicals, tillage, water and energy.
The foundation awarded $250,000 prize to the winner.
Over his career spanning more than five decades and four continents, Lal has promoted innovative soil-saving techniques benefiting the livelihoods of more than 500 million smallholder farmers, improving the food and nutritional security of more than two billion people and saving hundreds of millions of hectares of natural tropical ecosystems.
“The unbound joy and excitement of receiving the 2020 World Food Prize reminds me about the gratitude, privilege, and honor of working for farmers from around the world,” Lal said.
“Yet, the urgent task of feeding humanity is not fulfilled until each and every person has access to an adequate amount of nutritious food grown on healthy soil and in a clean environment,” he added.
According to him, achieving hunger-free humanity, soil degradation neutrality, negative emission farming and pollutant-free water are among principal challenges which can never be ignored.
“Sustainable management of soil and agriculture is also essential to keeping global temperatures within the safe range and restoring the environment,” he pointed out.
World Food Prize Foundation President Barbara Stinson described Dr Lal as a “trailblazer in soil science” with a “prodigious” passion for research that improves soil health, enhances agricultural production, improves the nutritional quality of food, restores the environment and mitigates climate change.
Stinson added that Dr Lal’s decades of work to address all of these elements fully warrants his recognition as the 50th World Food Prize Laureate.”
“From his humble beginnings as a refugee growing up on a small subsistence farm in India, his determination to learn and succeed in school propelled him to become one of the world’s foremost soil scientists,” the organisation said in a statement.
Dr Lal’s pioneering research on the restoration of soil health in Africa, Asia and Latin America led to revelations that impacted agricultural yields, natural resource conservation and climate change mitigation. The agricultural practices Dr Lal advocated are now at the heart of efforts to improve agriculture systems in the tropics and globally.
The organisation said Dr Lal, one of the most prolific agricultural scientists with more than 100,000 citations, is acutely aware of the necessity of working with national, international and governmental institutions to translate research into impact at the community and farmer level.
Dr Lal”s models indicate that restoring soil health can lead to multiple benefits by the year 2100, including more than doubling the global annual grain yield to feed the growing world population, while decreasing the land area under grain cultivation by 30 percent and decreasing total fertilizer use by half, it said.
Making this a reality will enormously benefit farmers, food consumers and the environment.
Dr Lal has worked on the premise that the health of soil, plants, animals, people and the environment is indivisible.
He began his research career at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture in Nigeria, developing soil health restoration projects across Asia, Africa and Latin America. He explored and transformed techniques such as no-tillage, cover cropping, mulching and agroforestry that protected the soil from the elements, conserved water and returned nutrients, carbon and organic matter to the soil. This in turn improved the long-term sustainability of agroecosystems and minimised the risks to farmers of droughts, floods, and other effects of a changing climate, the organization said.
World Food Prize Selection Committee Chair and 2009 Laureate Gebisa Ejeta said Lal’s “stellar work” on management and conservation of agriculture’s most cherished natural resource, the soil, sets him apart. [/ihc-hide-content]
