Suburbanization and poor land policy have done incredible damage to soil and food systems. It turns out that the damage down to the soil itself is a contributing factor to the increased speed in human-created climate change. So to slow down the rate of climate change we can improve our soil and you can do so locally or on a large scale.
“We need to focus on the carbon dioxide supply into the atmosphere, but we really need to focus on the demand side as well,” says Larry Kopald, co-founder of The Carbon Underground, a nonprofit that’s advocates for soil carbon storage. “We have to put the CO2 back into a sink where it’s demanded and where it is useful, and improve the reabsorption of the carbon that is already out there.”
Constant plowing causes erosion, allowing soil content to flow into waterways or be blown away. And climate change itself exacerbates soil carbon loss, recent research has shown.