It seems the answer may be yes. For we might be sitting in a ticking carbon bomb. African soil is degrading ever faster, losing us millions of hectares a year. And while scientists have known for the longest time that soil ‘breathes out’ pure carbon dioxide, the emerging horror is that our heated, drought-struck soils are now breathing out more, maybe even a lot more.
For, ominously, in all the ‘we-are-looking-at-soil-carbon-now’ noise, the drip, drip raising of alarms, and even the odd prominent public fight between scientists, it turns out our carbon calculations have never included soil breathing. Until you factor in soil. And that’s made soil into the kind of geopolitical focus that presidents meet for summits about. It has also drawn Dr Cary Fowler into the fray, as the now US Envoy for Food Security, in his second crusade to lead the world away from destruction.
Yet his solution is as sweet for Africa as his seed vault was for biodiversity – for how do you stop the continent’s soils degrading at speed? Even as initiatives have flourished to draw farmers into new approaches that boost soil carbon, the world’s leading carbon credit verifier, Verra, observes forlornly that these often reduce output for farmers for some time – which isn’t a treat in a continent already caught between roaring population growth and falling yields.