How practical is carbon farming as a system for coffee companies to pay for measured increases in soil carbon?

Virtuous Agriculture with Andrea Illy and Rattan Lal

17 Nov 2020 · 63 min

1:03:21

In a World Coffee Research‑hosted panel, chairman Andrea Illy and soil scientist Rattan Lal discuss the concept of "virtuous" or regenerative agriculture as a pathway to carbon‑negative coffee production, climate mitigation, and improved human health. Illy frames the challenge in the context of the Paris Agreement, the 4‑per‑mille soil carbon target, and the need to link soil carbon enrichment to consumer‑driven premium pricing. He outlines the shortcomings of the Green Revolution, the importance of soil organic matter for resilience, and proposes a data‑driven prototype that merges agronomic and nutritional epidemiology to demonstrate health benefits of carbon‑rich soils. Lal expands the narrative, describing soils as living, endangered ecosystems with a "peak soil" threshold, and emphasizes the ecosystem services of healthy soils. He details regenerative practices (no‑till, cover crops, biochar, integrated nutrient management, agroforestry, microbial monitoring), quantifies potential carbon sequestration rates, and discusses the economics of carbon credits, measurement challenges, and the broader societal implications—including stewardship, soil rights, and the link between soil health and global peace. Both speakers call for coordinated research, industry‑academia collaboration, and policy mechanisms to scale carbon farming in coffee and other crops.

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Rattan Lal explains that the main hurdle is quantification and verification. Current methods involve soil sampling for carbon concentration and bulk density, with emerging remote‑sensing proxies (soil colour, heat capacity, neutron scattering, LIBS). Existing long‑term datasets can estimate sequestration rates for specific soil types, but market prices are low without a carbon cap. He suggests that societal valuation of ecosystem services should guide fair compensation, making carbon farming immediately applicable if measurement and payment mechanisms are aligned.

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TranscriptAuto-generated · 63 min

Welcome everyone. I'm Doug Welsh. I'm the current chair of World Coffee Research, uh, and it is my pleasure to introduce our speakers today. The first is Andrea Illy, who will need no introduction to many of you. He is currently the chairman of Illy Caffè and served as the company's chief executive officer for 22 years until 2016. Mr. Illy is widely recognized for contributions in making Illy Caffè famous for its innovation in espresso technology, for his passionate support of culture and art, for his steadfast leadership in the coffee industry of corporate responsibility. In particular, Mr. Illy has used his position to draw international attention to the climate crisis and to advocate for urgent responses from the business community. Among his many recognitions, Mr. Illy was named Cavaliere del Lavoro by the President of the Italian Republic. Always one to be pushing forward, Mr. Illy has begun to engage the coffee industry to think more deeply about the concept of regenerative or virtuous agriculture and has brought this topic forward to us today. We are so pleased to have you here today, Mr. Illy, Welcome.
So good morning to all of you, and thank you for— uh, can you hear me? Yes. Okay, very good. Good morning, and, and thank you for, uh, your, uh, very nice presentation, Doug. It's really a pleasure and an honor to present my, um, studies about virtuous agriculture, which I did during a sabbatical I think the introduction to this study is more important than the, let's say, the notions I will introduce, which are in some cases pretty much well known. But my starting point was after the Paris climate meeting in 2015, When the COP set the ambitious goal of limiting temperature increase to 1.5 degrees by the end of the century and setting the goal to be carbon-free in 2050, I said, as Voltaire says, if you want to improve the world, then start cultivating your garden. So how can Illy be carbon-free before 2015— 2050? So this really is a kind of a nightmare for any industry, for any activity and community, because we are living in a society which is fundamentally carbon positive. There are only very, very, very, very few human activity— not non-human activities, sorry, natural activities which are carbon negative, which is all about photosynthesis, which is the only biological process which is about anabolism, not catabolism, which is the opposite of combustion. But whichever life activity, particularly the human one, is based on combustion. So in order to become carbon negative, as this roadmap let's say, defined in Paris. After 2015, we will— '50, sorry. After 2050, once we become— should we become carbon neutral in 2050, we will need to be increasingly exponentially carbon negative so that we can sequester a great amount of the greenhouse gases which have been emitted in, in the past. In the past, in this very, very, very little time which is the Anthropocene, this era, geological era, which started with the Industrial Revolution in the second half of 19th century, is such a little amount of time which, if you put the life of Earth life to 1 day, in 4 million you compress in 1 day, then this Anthropocene is only 2 milliseconds. So yes, we will need maybe an extra 2 milliseconds in order to become carbon negative, but how can we be carbon negative? This is a physical— first of all, scientific question, and then possibly in the future more and more a technological one. because basically the carbon cycle, which is the origin of life on the planet, is engulfed by too much carbon released in the air during this Anthropocene, where we did extract all the carbon which has been sequestered, diligently sequestered by the Earth under the soil. So together today, the only possible activity of carbon sequestration is still by reforestation, afforestation, carbon and soil carbon enrichment. And as far as IllyCafé is concerned, I was lucky enough to immediately find this idea which was brought by, inspired by Professor Lai and among his colleagues, and brought to the Paris conference, this 4 per mille goal. This 4 per mille goal states that if you are going to enrich the soil with organic matter, you are going not only to sequester soil from— excuse me, carbon from the air, but also do many other positive effects. And this is the model of virtuous agriculture. In order to try to build on this idea, to really leverage on this idea of carbon, soil carbon enrichment, so that more and more growers and consumers adopt the model of virtuous agriculture for the future. So I did anticipate this chart already. Sorry if I was a little bit long in my, my presentation. Of course, agriculture must adapt to this climate change, and it must not only adapt, it has significant work to do in mitigation because it's responsible for 25% of the greenhouse gases. There are many different, let's say, of this educated guess about how much is the real contribution of agriculture to the greenhouse gases emission, but this is the probably the most, let's say, official of this. But also malnutrition. Malnutrition, even though it would seem completely different, completely apart from our conversation, is part of the conversation of virtuous agriculture. Why that? First of all, because agriculture also needs to adapt to climate change, because if it doesn't adapt, productivity and, and food security will be gone. Each 1 degree of temperature increase, you lose 25% productivity in a plantation. So, and food demand is expected to grow by 50% because the population is increasing, because there are new regions which are pulling out of poverty, which are demanding more food. And so how can we cope with this diminishing production due to climate change, increasing impact of agriculture due to carbon greenhouse gases emission, and together at the same time cope with the demand increase? The solution is in in the soil. Soils are a little bit forgotten because after the Green Revolution, which had the merit to be able to to create the capacity to feed the extra nearly seven billion people in the planet when before compared to when it started because when it started it started with this one of these Malthusian let's say, prediction that we are not going to have enough food for feeding humanity. And it has been the Green Revolution creating this capacity, production capacity. The problem is the flip side of the Green Revolution is that it is depleting the soils. And the more it depletes the soils due to intensive to extreme productivity, the more the soil is depleted, the more it depends on— dependent from agrochemistry. And the agrochemistry creates a kind of a vicious cycle where more agrochemistry, more— and this depletes the soil even more. And this is a problem because it not only makes agriculture less and less resilient, but at the same time, it also really jeopardizes the biogeochemical cycles which are responsible for homeostasis on the planet. So serious problem, and which is impacting, of course, also healthy humans. It cannot be hidden, the fact that the origin of our pandemia, which is impacting all of us on the planet nowadays, is the same origin as the climate change. It's the anthropogenic impact on ecosystems which is creating— did create in this area that we are living so huge imbalances that eventually become unsustainable. So soil health is human health. Why that? Because soil, as said, is the second largest carbon sink after ocean. with a capacity which is 3 times more than the atmosphere. So the positive fallout is if you enrich soils with carbon, with organic matter, you not only sequester carbon from the air, but you enrich the soil with the so-called microbiota, which is fed with organic matter. And that microbiota, with a million of different microorganisms and with their metabolites, is producing the natural defenses of the plants against pathogens, which are the enemies of agriculture. Not only— Soil-enriched soils are more fertile because they retain more water. They are less, let's say, impacted by erosion. There are plenty of positive fallouts of a healthy soil. At the same time, the diet influences health. If we are so impacted now by this pandemic, it's because in the last century medicine, let's say, shifted from transmittable, communicable disease to non-communicable diseases. Non-communicable diseases like cardiovascular, cancer, diabetes, and others are the number one factor for human death with 48 million deaths per year. And they are directly correlated to lifestyle. And lifestyle is about what we eat, what we do in our life, and how much physical activities we do. So a healthier lifestyle, starting with our nutrition, is the number one preventative cure, let's say, against carbon non-communicable diseases with Up to 10 million deaths which can be prevented with a better diet. So carbon farming is the only way apparently to adapt and at the same time mitigate climate change. To know today, we know a lot about organic and biodynamic, which remains niches which need have the privilege to be the pioneer showing the road. But these are not sustainable enough agricultural practices because the soil are not rich enough because it needs— the productivity is very often too low and consequently needs more land to produce the same output. So one estimate is that organic farming could account for up to 20% of the total agriculture. Recently, the European Union released the Farm to Fork strategy for the next 10 years and set the goal of 25% organic farming, but it's probably difficult to reach. So we need a solution for the remaining 75 to 80% agriculture which cannot be organic. So there are plenty of these carbon farming, uh, solutions like regenerative agriculture, integrated farming. You have agroforestry, you have holistic agriculture, all set of agronomical practices like agroecology, integrated farming, strip farming, strip agriculture, and many others. There are probably a catalog of 15 different, which needs to be adapted to the different ecological niches, to the different ecosystems and the different products to be produced. Well, with the same point in common, which is carbon farming, enriching the soil with organic, with biomass, biomass which could be produced by cover crops. Of course, no tillage is one of the very first practices which is highly recommended. And bio— excuse me, compost is another very important practice, biochar if we want to enrich soil in a non-organic way, and so on. But this will be not enough. It will not be enough to use carbon farming as a solution to really get this double help that we are looking for. soil health and human health at the same time to get enough production, because it's too late. It's too late. So we will need to get the help of genetics. I'm not talking about GMOs. I'm talking about the new, most recent, advanced intraspecific, uh, uh, genetic technology which allows to trigger set of specific genes for specific objectives. Basically, this enhanced, let's say, genetic evolution will allow us to compress time in doing the exact same job which nature is, is doing since hundreds of millennia, and in a shorter period of time. It should not be seen as a, as a kind of a dogma or a mantra, this genetics, uh, uh, let's say, application to crops. Because if we look what is— whatever is produced by agriculture today, since, uh, the agriculture started 12,000 years ago, there is not one single, uh, let's say, um, cultivar which has not been modified in the past in— with one— one way— one way or the other, like breeding So the dual benefit of future. Let's let's try to to demonstrate how first of all let's define what is the food impact, the food health healthy food. Healthy food is typically a food which is uh, not, uh, not damaging our health. Of course, if we consider, uh, residues of agrochemical molecules, uh, residues of hormones in meat, residues of, uh, uh, um, pharma in, in, in the meat, like, uh, like, uh, this is— this is— this might be a problem for our— for our— for our diet because we— we might— we might— we might trigger inflammation, we might trigger, uh, um, the beginning of the— let's say, degenerative process in our body, which is— which is causing, uh, disease, non-communicable diseases. But, uh, On top of healthy food, there can be beneficial food. Healthy food is absence of damage. Beneficial is presence of a benefit. So the same phytochemicals which are originated by the soil microbioma can be in some case good for our health. In coffee, for instance, we have a class of components which is called the trichlorogenic acids, which are known to be very strong antioxidants. In the tomato, you have lycopene. In olive oil, you have vitamin E, and so on. You name specific, let's say, agricultural products, and you will be able to find a molecule or more than one molecule or principles which are good for our health. The idea of a virtuous agriculture is to identify the correlation between the nutritional effects of food with the presence of this active principles and how these active principles can be maximized with a virtuous agriculture. So it's about putting together for the first time, uh, 2 sets of data: the agronomical ones with the epidemiological, epidemiological one from nutrition and health. And see if there are correlations. This is something that is possible thanks to the digital revolution with the so-called big data, data mining, and finding some correlations through basically virtuous engines. So the idea of to embrace a virtuous agriculture is in order to create a double benefit, as recommended by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The Intergovernmental— the IPCC recommends whichever strategy to address climate change should possibly address also a dual benefit, which is not only for the environment. So I thought that from the point of view of the consumer, Promising better food, which is more sustainable from the environmental point of view, but also healthier, creates a much bigger motivation and incentive in order to prefer this kind of foods. This is why I try to find this double health, soil health and human health, this correlation. And if, like it's already happening in organic food, the consumer identifies that virtuous agriculture is healthier, then they will be ready to also pay a premium price. And with the premium price, they will help growers to make a premium extra margin and be also compensating for, let's say, the possible lower, let's say, productivity which can occur during the period of transition from a traditional agriculture to carbon farming. At the same time, for the grower point of view, carbon farming can start a new revenue stream, which is the carbon credit one. So there is a substantial economical equation which really has so many triggers, let's say incentives for all stakeholders involved, that we can change course. Um, as far as the, let's say, project is concerned, uh, besides saying that this virtuous agriculture is impacting several of the SDGs, because, uh, most of the agriculture is in developing countries, if they have more, let's say, pull out more resources from agriculture, it would be good for alleviating poverty. And it's about better health, much better impact in water, for sure preventing water pollution with agriculture, and, uh, and, and, and of course climate change. I don't want to show all the list. We are now in the process of trying to, uh, let's say, develop a prototype by creating big data, putting together some product with their— let's say we tried with apple. The problem is that there is very— there are very large databases in nutrition and epidemiology. There are very small databases in agronomical data. So it will be difficult to find enough data to build a solid prototype. Worst case, we will need to create the agricultural database on— with a specific— for the specific purpose, and then start building a prototype proving that we can identify the correlation between the benefits for health together with the agronomical practices. This is what we are going to To do. This is our small contribution as far as Illy is concerned, and then I'm finished because we are talking about world coffee research. Coffee research is a little bit tricky because it's a bean, it's not a fruit, and it's a bean which is undergoing extremely invasive, let's say, transformation during roasting. So, uh, the vast majority of molecules and active plant principles present in the green bean will be transformed during roasting. So it will be more difficult to correlate the health benefit in coffee together with the agronomical practices compared to other unroasted produces. But because we have a good database, we will try to, let's say, address this research for coffee also. From the agronomical side, coffee is known to be— even the ICO, International Coffee Organization, it declares that it is carbon negative in certain conditions, I would add. Maybe it is carbon negative in agroforestry condition like in Ethiopia. Okay, but we can prove that coffee can be carbon neutral or carbon negative under certain conditions. The problem is how to now readjust the very high productive coffee agrosystems like that you have in leading countries like Brazil under monoculture, high productivity, and heavily, let's say, fertilized, chemically fertilized, and also with a substantial use of of active principles against pests and diseases. This is the secret, and this is what I hope we will be able to help all our partners in the coffee, in the coffee agriculture industry to learn together with us. So we are starting now 2 new plantations, one in Guatemala and one in Ethiopia, which are designed to be carbon-free from the very beginning. And I hope already in 2021 we will start, COVID permitting, the pandemic, we start multiple little tests, maybe one hectare test or something, trying to apply the several different possible agronomical practices typical of carbon farming so that we can identify the kind of a set of of possible options how to transform even coffee agriculture into virtues. Thank you very much. I think I was long enough. I hope it was a broad, let's say, perspective for discussion.
Thank you, Andrea. That was really fantastic. And if anyone can lead this linkage between human health We care most about ourselves after all, and soil and planet health, it is you. And as always, I'm inspired by your vision and your ability to put the issues before us. We could not be more pleased to round out our discussion today with our next speaker, Rattan Lal. We are exceedingly lucky to have Dr. Lal with us This morning, in June of this year, he was named the winner of the 2020 World Food Prize, often called the Nobel Prize of agriculture. The prize is awarded to individuals who have advanced human development by improving the quality, quantity, or availability of food in the world. Dr. Lal has spent his decades-long career studying and advocating for others to study soil health and restoration as as the basis of sustainable agricultural development. His research addresses soil carbon sequestration for food and climate security, the carbon footprint of agriculture, ecological intensification of agriculture, conservation agriculture, soil restoration, soil health, and tropical soils. Hailing originally from India, he has spent most of his professional career at The Ohio State University, where he's currently a distinguished university professor of soil science and director of the Carbon Management and Sequestration Center. And he is as prolific and regenerative as the soils he studies. He has authored nearly 1,000 journal articles and mentored 360 researchers and has been awarded numerous other prizes recognizing the impact of work. We are so pleased to welcome you here this morning, Dr. Lal, to talk with us about your work.
Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Welsh. That's very nice. It was really a great privilege to listen to Mr. Andrea Illy. It's truly remarkable. I don't think I could have done any better in explaining the link between soil health and human health and the credit carbon farming and everything that he explained. Okay, I will appreciate the opportunity to present my PowerPoint. I'm going to take— okay, thank you very much. It's really difficult to say— it's difficult to say anything better than what Mr. Illy has already said. But I'm going to begin by explaining things in a different way, the same concept, that it's critical to objectively consider how we produce, store, process, transport, and consume our food, and manage the byproducts of agroecosystems in ways that maximize the use efficiency of inputs, minimize the environmental footprint, and spare land for nature. Similar to plants and animals, there are also endangered soil and extinct soils. Mr. Illy mentioned Green Revolution had an impact on soil quality. So as a result of erosion, degradation, decline in soil quality, similar to endangered species of plants and animals, uh, there are also endangered and extinct soils. And similar to natural resources, there is also a peak soil. We may have passed the peak soil because of very high population. Already, we are 8 billion. We require 0.25 hectare of good farmland per person to produce enough food and other necessities. In many countries at the moment, very densely populated countries in Asia, for example, the per capita arable land area is 0.05 hectare. Therefore, there's a lot of pressure on land grab, which I will not go into issue, but civil unrest, political instability, and the so-called soil refugees. When the land cannot support the people, therefore they try to migrate. Last year we had almost 69 million refugees, many of them because of soil, climate, and other natural resources. Yes, there is a peak soil, good soil. Yes, there are endangered and extinct soil also. There is a very strong link between soil and life. For example, soil is a living entity. It's a habitat for 25% of all terrestrial biodiversity. A spoonful of good soil contains more biota organisms than the Amazon jungle because of the biodiversity. Land misuse and soil mismanagement is a serious threat to soil health and biodiversity. Therefore, the objective of management is to enhance and strengthen soil's capacity to support life. Soil organic matter is the essence of soil health and its capacity to support life. Soil health, I want to define that in my own definition. I'm sorry, I lost the PowerPoint. Okay, I'm back. So it is defined as the capacity as a dynamic and biological active entity within natural and managed landscapes to sustain multiple ecosystem services Including net primary productivity, food and nutritional security, biodiversity, water purification and renewability, carbon sequestration, air quality and atmospheric chemistry, and elemental cycling for both human and nature. We must not focus always on human. Nature is very important. Humans are part of nature. So if we hurt nature, obviously we hurt ourselves. As was said very clearly by Mr. Illy, soil health is related to plant health, plant to animal health, animal to human health, human to environmental health, environment to planet health. Therefore, when soil degradation happens by anthropogenic activity, Then there's a domino effect. And it's very important to understand also that rhizosphere, that the soil-root interface at a nanoscale, is the only site in the universe which has the divine powers to resurrect death into life. We should never forget that statement. How do you feed the world? I think Mr. Illy said in many very nice ways. I would like to suggest that we already produce enough food, but 30 to 50% of the food produced is wasted. Please remember that 1 ton of food saved from wastage is much better than 1 additional ton produced. We must increase access to food By addressing poverty, inequality, civil strife, refugees due to political instability. We must improve distribution of the food. We must adopt healthy food habits. Mr. Illy explained that very nicely. One phrase that I have borrowed from Vedas, ancient Sanskrit scriptures, it says, when diet is right, medicine is of no need. When diet is wrong, medicine is of no use. And I think that was very, very clearly stated by Mr. Illy in his presentation. We must also accept personal responsibility of not taking food, soil, natural resources for granted. And we must make sure that we increase production from existing land. We restore degraded land. We increase biological nitrogen fixation by legumes. We protect prime land against urbanization, surface sealing, brickmaking. And we must return some land which is marginal for agriculture back to nature through eco-intensification and restoration of soil health. So what is eco-intensification? The idea is to produce more food, good quality food, healthy food from less land, less water, less inputs of fertilizer and pesticide, less use of energy, and less emission of greenhouse gases. Our agricultural practices must be pro-nature. They must be nature-friendly. because our health depends on natural environments. So the Green Revolution of the 21st century compared to what we had in the '60s, which was outstanding, it saved hundreds of millions of people, but that was strictly variety-based and input of fertilizers and irrigation. We want now a revolution which is based on soil resilience. Soil health, ecosystem-based, eco-efficiency. It must be knowledge-based, science and management-driven. And the idea is soil farming rather than crop or animal farming. We want to focus farming on soil health. That was the part missed out. Consequently, the Green Revolution bypassed Sub-Saharan Africa. until now because soil health was not taken care of. That brings me to the question of regenerative agriculture, which again Mr. Illy explained it very nicely. I think it's inspired by eco-innovation, it's powered by known carbon energy, it's driven by a circular economy and green infrastructure, and it's supported by the recarbonization of the terrestrial biosphere, that the soil and the trees, as the bedrock of sustainable development. I must overemphasize the word, the bedrock of sustainable development. Please understand how similarity this wording has with the virtuous agriculture defined by Mr. Andrea Illy. He said, and he also repeated earlier, virtuous agriculture, soil-to-soul production. Refers to a farming method that combines sustainable production with a focus on regenerating the environment by enriching soil with organic matter content. I don't think I could have done any better than what he did already. So what it— how it can be done? Continuous soil cover, no soil disturbance, integrated nutrient management, complex rotation with COVID crops, and restoring soil organic matter content through better management practices. And of course, producing more and better quality food from less inputs. I would like to show a possible cartoon, a model of how coffee, for example, which is your focus plant, with good root system, healthy variety, improved variety, Especially he mentioned how genetic could improve much better. I would like to see this plant that emits molecular-based signal under specific stress, biotic or abiotic, so that we can detect that stress by remote sensing, by drone-based technology, or by sensor. And those, the signals are different for different stresses, so we can intervene. This could be for coffee or for any other crop. We should have a very large root system that can explore larger soil mass. It really possibly should have mycorrhizal association. We should have all the time soil covered by one type of mulch or the other type of mulch. In case of coffee, we must integrate with trees such as the trees of the tropical regions, inga or bananas. We obviously do not want to have any tillage, no-till system. We should have a rhizobium association. We should have integrated nutrient management. We must have a very high soil biodiversity, as a result of which soil becomes disease suppressive. It has predators that kill pathogens for plants, and consequently you do not need so much pesticide. And of course, we can integrate with trees and livestock. to make complex systems which are resilient against the climate change. The Life Fence is a very good example of Central America, for example, integrating things. If you need additional water and nutrients to coffee or another plant, they must be given directly to plant roots through drip sub-fertigation. And they should be provided in such a format, nano fertilizer, for example, that most of them are absorbed by the plants and not leaked out into the environment. This is why collaboration between agronomists, soil scientists, and plant breeders, geneticists, is very, very critical, along with, of course, the farmers and land managers who have to put this model into practice. There is a threshold level of organic matter content for a healthy soil. And the threshold level for good production is about 3% to 4% organic matter content. If the organic matter content is less than that, which for many small poor holders of tropics and subtropics where coffee is planted, the productivity is less. And when soil is not healthy, even the use efficiency of input is much less. Therefore, restoring organic matter what we call carbon-based fertilization. Ground is covered always by cover crop, conservation agriculture, no-till system, and using legumes. And the idea of fertilizer is CNPK. C comes before NPK because if you have better C, the need for NPK would be much less. The importance of Organic fertilizer, the COVID cropping is obviously very critical in this concept. That being the case, I would like to discuss with you a future scenario of how things could be improved by regenerative virtuous agriculture system. The population is obviously going up right now. We have 7.8 billion people in 2020, 9.7, 9.8 billion by 2050. According to some models, Very positive development that the population may stabilize after 2050 and begin to decline to perhaps 8.8 billion rather than 11.2 billion. I hope that's the case. The per capita food consumption will go up as the influence and the affluence also goes up, income goes up. Therefore, the cereal production will have to increase at the same time. But the land area needed for cereal production does not have to be increased. In fact, I am very much against converting more natural system into agriculture system. If we do agriculture better, translate the science, we know it, we can increase the productivity. Therefore, we do not need more area. In fact, we can take some area out back to nature. Similarly, right now the fertilizer used in the world is 200 million tons. There is absolutely no reason to have any more than 100 million tons, perhaps even not that much. The use efficiency of fertilizer, because soil health is poor, because the organic matter content is 0.2%, 0.5%, not 3% or 4%, so the use efficiency is hardly 30%. 30% in China, maybe 25% India, perhaps 40% in the US and Europe. At the same time, irrigation— we have now 350 million hectares, but we use as much as 3,000+ kilometer cube of water. If we use fertigation, drip irrigations, micro-irrigation, improved technology, the area can be increased more. from 350 to maybe 500 million or 700 million. But the water use doesn't have to be increased. The water use should be decreased. So the idea is with better science, we save natural resources— soil, fertilizer, water, energy— and the soil— use the best soil and leave the rest for the nature. Therefore, the future of agriculture is very bright. I think with visionary industrial leader, uh, private companies, like example we have Mr. Andrea Illy, we really have a bright future. I was very impressed with what he had to say. More changes because of people like him will occur between 2020 and 2050 than have happened over the past 10,000 years ago since the agriculture began. I think that is— and virtuous agriculture, regenerative agriculture is an example of that change. The health of food environment is another part. The rate of carbon sequestration can be in wetland restoration, 1,500 kilograms per hectare. In plantations such as coffee or afforestation, could be about a ton of carbon per hectare. I'm talking about soil organic. I'm not talking about the biomass. The turf lawns, even in the cities, managed properly, even roof gardens can have a carbon sequestration. No-till is about half a ton. Rangeland in the dry land is about 200 kilograms per hectare. In addition to this, and in addition to the bio, there is also soil inorganic carbon, especially in the Mediterranean climate. in the arid and semi-arid region. That's another part, a very large part, but it does not have much impact on crop growth and productivity. Therefore, we don't consider. But in the biogeochemical cycle in relation to climate change, both organic and inorganic carbon are equally important. Technical potential of carbon sequestration soils of the world, all soils following Caterpillar Mill program, for example, if it can be implemented, which I hope It's about 2.5 gigaton, billion ton, petagram of carbon per year, because that is under ideal condition. If we can do even half of that, that's excellent. If you combine this with vegetation, afforestation, I have calculated this with about 10, 12 other colleagues from around the world. Soils can sequester between now and 2100, 180 gigaton, petagram, billion tons. Vegetation, forest plantation, timber, another 155. Total 333, which is a drawdown of 157 parts per million of CO2. So if we stop fossil fuel right now, adopt regenerative agriculture to sequester carbon in soil and vegetation The future climate is in our hand. We can still do it. We must do it. We must stop fossil fuel combustion and recarbonize the biosphere. The total carbon loss from biosphere soil is about 130-150 gigatons since the agriculture began. Vegetation is another 330. Total from the terrestrial biosphere To date, since agriculture began, we have lost 550 gigaton. We must, we can, we should put it back. That brings me to 3 approaches. One is the stewardship, how to encourage spiritual concepts. And I've been very impressed by Pope Francis on what he wrote in his encyclic. I think if the religious leader of all religions— Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism, Islam, Judaism, every religion— go back to your scriptures and see what they say in terms of protecting nature, and they are all very common. Therefore, we should be promoting commonalities among religions rather than the differences, and the stewardship of natural resources is a very important commonality. So stewardship means soil stewardship and care must be embedded in every fruit and vegetable eaten, in each grain ground into the bread consumed, and Mr. Illy, in every cup of coffee consumed, in every breath of air inhaled, in every scenic landscape cherished. That is what the stewardship idea is. That should be taught Not only in the religious organization, but in every school, right from primary school all the way up to the college levels, and to every religious and non-religious organization and industry, for which the coffee— Mr. Illy is a great example. He also talked about farming carbon. Farming carbon means growing soil carbon as a farm commodity. Like coffee, like milk, like corn, like beans, like any other product that can be bought and sold. So carbon in soil and trees sequestered can also be bought and sold and create another income stream for farmers. And an example is that I calculated— I published an article on this— the price of carbon, the societal value the inherent ecosystem services that it creates. $130 per ton of carbon, which comes to about $35 per ton of CO2, which is the same as the euro price of about €25, €30 per ton of CO2, which we can get in European industries, not in the US. That means if a farmer sequesters half a ton of carbon per hectare, for farmer should be compensated by somebody, including the society that consumes that produce, $65 per hectare or $26 per acre. If the rate of carbon sequestration is 1/3 of a ton, the compensation for farmer from that point of view should be about $43 per hectare, $18 per acre. So even if you are a small farmer or large farmer, this is the true inherent Societal value for the ecosystem services that carbon generates. The second part in that triangle mentioned is rights of soil. Like any other living entity, human, animals, soil must also have rights. Nature must also have a right. Being the essence of all life, soil must have also the rights to be protected, restored, thrived, and managed judiciously. managed judiciously. Simply because one owns that land does not mean they can dump on it whatever they wish. That is exactly what I mean. The reason is because it is full of life, and therefore recarbonization of the soil and the biosphere is really— has to be, should be, must be the engine of economic development. That is where the economic development will have the more strong bedrock foundation. That is also the basis of improving water resources, quality and quantity, climate change mitigation adaptation, food security, both quantity and quality, especially the nutritional quality of the food. And of course, the biodiversity, both above ground and below ground. That means the entire human civilization depends on that concept or recarbonization of the soil that we have lost from the land, uh, the biocarbon that we have lost from both the land and the soil. At the end, I would like to mention that something which is not talked about very often, very quickly, I strongly believe that the world peace and security depends on soil health. Why? Degrading soils, denuding landscape, recurring drought, intensifying heat waves, low crop yields, perpetual hunger, poor nutrition and malnourishment, marginal living, and desperateness are bigger threats to global peace and security than are ICBMs, nuclear weapons, and other weapons of mass destruction. And the reason for that is there are 25,000 people dying daily on hunger-related deaths. That is equal to 3.1 million deaths per year. That's equal to 7.3 deaths per minute. That's equal to 80 jumbo jets carrying 350 passengers crashing day per day per day. Yet it's not a newsworthy item, and that is the biggest threat to human peace and stability. Thank you for the opportunity to talk to you. I really appreciated it. Thank you.
Fantastic, fantastic. Thank you, thank you both. Um, I know we'll have some questions coming in on, um, On the chat, I have one to start. This idea of carbon farming seems more immediate and accessible than trading carbon credits and some of the other methods that seem more remote from us, seem more ripe for abuse. Whereas it seems more straightforward that coffee companies, for instance, could pay for a measured increase in carbon. I wonder if you could elaborate on that as a, you know, how practical, let's say, is it at this point, or how far away are we from a meaningful system of— Of carbon farming?
Thank you. Um, yes, the idea is to make carbon in soil and trees, vegetation, uh, as a produce that can be bought. And I think industry obviously has to play a very important role in that. Uh, it's not something that the government can do. Uh, and the major issue here is how to quantify and how to verify. That's the key thing. Remember, I was assuming If you have half a ton per hectare, how much you should be paid if you have 1/3? So how do you quantify? Well, there are systems which are available. You can go take soil sample. That's what my center does. And then bring it to the lab and evaluate it and then pay farmer accordingly. We need 2 measurements, A, carbon concentration in soil up to at least the root zone, and B, the bulk density of the soil. how much is the material of the soil per unit volume. So those are the 2 factors we need. Now, there have been some advances recently where we are able to remote-sensely quantify it based on surrogate methods, color of the soil, for example, heat capacity of the soil, emission of certain compounds. There are progresses being made, but at the same time, In every land-grant university and USDA experiment in the US, for example, we have data for major soils in Ohio. People at Purdue have it for Illinois, Cornell has it for New York, and so forth. So we know for each soil type based on last 30, 40 years of data, what is the rate of carbon sequestration when you convert from conventional agriculture to no-till farming with COVID crops, with manure. So that data exists and available. So we can probably say if you have a Miami soil and you convert from conventional to no-till, uh, it will be half a ton per hectare. If you adopt a cover crop in the off-season, maybe 750 kilograms. If you also have manure added, maybe a ton. So this kind— and you can probably based on the research knowledge, say plus minus 5%. Or, uh, we can also wait for a new technology which is coming up. Uh, Brookhaven National Lab came up with a technology called INS, inelastic neutron scattering. I calibrated it in Ohio. Uh, the Los Alamos National Lab came up with a technology called LIBS, laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy. So quite a lot of innovation are coming. And the question is, how do you pay the farmers? Is it based on market demand and supply? Well, right now we do not have a cap on burning fossil fuel. Maybe California has. But without any cap, there is no demand, but there's a lot of supply. So the market price in Chicago Climate Exchange, rather than $30 per ton of CO2 I was talking about, Is less than a ton, a dollar a ton. So that is not a fair price. So we have to go to the societal value of ecosystems. With that, I think it is immediately applicable in terms of adoption.
Thank you. I, I, we are short on time, and so I will encourage everyone to, uh, submit your questions by email and we will answer them. But I'd like to end with one, just one question for Andrea Illy, which is, we've heard sort of from the business side, what would you ask from research and the academy in support of virtuous agriculture?
Well, very good question, thank you. I would encourage research In order to prove that there is a direct correlation between carbon soil enrichment and resilience of coffee agriculture, productivity, and sustainability. At the end of the day, World Coffee Research was born in order to protect coffee agriculture from the impact of climate change because there have been studies proving that up to 50% of the currently suitable land for coffee agriculture will be gone by 2050 as a consequence of climate change. We know that we have more and more climate calamities like droughts, like erosions, like this kind of— not frosts any longer, but all this can be significantly improved with better soils. So I think it's as important as the genetic, let's say, core competence of WCR.
I appreciate that, and I would like to add my thanks to all of those who are attending today for their continued support of World Coffee Research, which is fundamentally a collaborative organization. I should also mention that Andrea is a member of our board, full disclosure. So, but I want to just finish by thanking you both for a phenomenal presentation. For me, it really extends beyond this idea of responsibility, beyond coffee, and in a very important way. However, I will just, you know, make this one note that we're all going to continue to need coffee in order to continue the research and the persuasion that we will need in terms of transforming the systems under which we live and under which we feed one another and care for one another as well as our planet. So thank you so much, both. I can't think of 2 more interesting panelists, more interesting presentations. more important for this time. And we will, for those of you online, we will answer your questions and we'll get back to you. And I want to thank you for attending today and wish you a good day.
Thank you. Thank
you. Thank you so much. Bye-bye.
Goodbye.
Thank you.
Thank you.