Approaches for Capturing Soil Carbon for Sustained Food and Nutritional Security

Soils of the world’s agroecosystems (croplands, grazing lands, rangelands) are depleted of their organic carbon (SOC) by 25–75% depending on climate, soil type, and historic management. The extent of drain may be of 10–50 Mg carbon/ha. Soils with acute depletion of their SOC have low agronomic yield and use the efficiency of supplemental inputs. Adopting recommended management practices and changing to a restorative land use can improve soil quality, boost agronomic productivity, improve soil resilience to withstand extreme weather events, improve global food security, enrich the SOC sink, and mitigate climate change by offsetting emissions from fossil fuels. Agroecosystems soils have the technical capacity to sequester ~1.2 and 3.1 billion tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) annually. Improved soil quality can boost food production in underdeveloped nations by 24–32 million tons. The global agriculture has the capacity to sequester around 0.75 ± 1.0 Pg of carbon each year. Thus, in addition to reducing the possibility of global warming, carbon sequestration helps in increasing food security in a sustainable way.