Eminent Indian-American soil scientist Rattan Lal was named this year’s recipient of $250,000 World Food Prize, with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo lauding his research in soil science, saying he is helping millions of small farmers around the world with his work on increasing food production and recycling of nutrients.

Lal, 75, was named as the 2020 World Food Prize laureate for developing and mainstreaming a soil-centric approach to increasing food production that conserves natural resources and mitigates climate change. The World Food Prize is considered to be equivalent to a Nobel Prize for agriculture.

Lal said the award is special because the first recipient of this prestigious award in 1987 was Indian agricultural scientist M.S. Swaminathan, the father of India’s Green Revolution.

Lal promoted soil-saving techniques

In 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 small farmers, the World Food Prize Foundation, which is based in Iowa, said in a statement.

His work has also improved the food and nutritional security of more than two billion people and saved hundreds of millions of hectares of natural tropical ecosystems, it said.

Lal, a Distinguished Professor in the College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences (CFAES) at the Ohio State University, said that he would donate the $250,000 award money for future soil research and education.

In 2007, he was among those recognised with a Nobel Peace Prize Certificate for his contributions to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports, when the IPCC was named co-recipient of the Nobel Prize.

World Food Prize Foundation president Barbara Stinson described 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.

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 Lal advocated are now at the heart of efforts to improve agriculture systems in the tropics and globally.

The foundation said 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.

“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 per cent and decreasing total fertiliser use by half,” it said.

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 foundation  said.

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