An interview with Dr. Rattan Lal - 2020 World Food Prize Laureate

This month we had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Rattan Lal, a soil scientist, professor at The Ohio State University, and the 50th Laureate of the World Food Prize. Join us in learning more about his background, his experiences with in-field training, and his journey to winning the World Food Prize.

Dr. Rattan Lal (Photo courtesy of The Ohio State University)

Q: Dr. Lal - First off, could you take me through how you were introduced to agriculture?

A: “I'm still learning about soil science. It's a big field, and every day you learn something new. I grew up on a small farm in India, so I became familiar with smallholder agriculture right from my childhood. Farms in India, and many other places, are 5 acres, 10 acres, 2 acres - which is the norm.

I [received] a B.S. in agriculture at a university that was affiliated with The Ohio State University through a USAID-funded program. That is how I knew about The Ohio State University, even when I was an undergraduate student in the late 1950s. I specialized in soil, because one of my best professors in soil science had just returned to The Ohio State with his Ph.D. degree in ‘61, and he was a very good teacher. He became a role model for me to study soil science.

I did my master’s degree at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute, funded by The Rockefeller Foundation. The Rockefeller Foundation Director of India at that time, Dr. Ralph Cummings, was a soil physicist by training from The Ohio State University, and his staff soil scientist was Bill Wright. Bill Wright was also a soil physicist from Cornell [University], and he was on my Advisory Committee. I was having a great experience in soil science and I became linked with The Ohio State, Cornell, and other great educational institutions in the US. That gave me opportunities to study soil more.

Soil science is something that never ends. I'm still a student in soil science; I think I'll continue to be a student forever. That's the way life is! I enjoy it anytime I learn something new - and it's new learning every day.”

Q: Could you take me through some of your hands-on training?

A: “My undergraduate hands-on training was plowing! This was plowing using oxen. And the idea was to make sure you have a straight furrow. We used to have plowing competitions! I learned weed identification, weeding, and manual operations as well. I did the same thing at my family farm – weeding and inter-cultivation are a very important part as there were no herbicides, so it had to be done either manually or through oxen-driven cultivators. And I did quite a lot of that. The other hands-on training was irrigation. Our farm was irrigated by the canal, so flood irrigated. We would get something like 15 minutes of irrigation water on a weekly basis when it had rained. I had practical experience again at my farm of transplanting rice, picking cotton, harvesting wheat, threshing, and winnowing wheat.

I had a lot of practical experience, and some of those experiences led me to study soil. Plowing, for sure. You would have to plow two or three times in the summer in 45 °C or more. The soil would be very hot and dry, then plowed by oxen. And I began to wonder, ‘Why is that needed?’ I still cannot find an answer to that, but I had a lot of practical hands-on training both in the academic environment and my family environment.”

Q: For students and upcoming soil scientists, what do you see in terms of field training? Do you see that ever going away? Do you see that having a resurgence of importance?

A: “I hope it won’t go away. Even studying soil science, I emphasize in-field measurements of soil properties. When you take a sample and bring it to the lab, it is a soil sample, not soil. Under natural conditions, soil is a four-dimensional body: length, width, depth, and time. And the time part is important, it's changing over time because it is dynamic. Measurement of things such as field capacity, infiltration rate, bulk density, penetration resistance, soil temperature, soil moisture content – they should all be done under field conditions. The lab is an approximation surrogate, but the best properties are seen in the field. I support in-field measurement and the training of scientists who love studying soil. Under the natural condition with all its dynamic flora and fauna, earthworms and termites and centipedes and other organisms that you can see and some you cannot see - I think it should be right from primary school onward.

We have to give the message that food does not come from the grocery store. It comes from tactical hands-on fieldwork and that requires training. I'm not a plant breeder, but I think the same way. You see photos of Dr. Borlaug in the field crossing wheat varieties – that image of him being in the field should be used to promote in-field training, which I think is very critical.”

Q: The world’s population will likely reach 10 billion in the next 30 years. What do you think is going to happen? What are your thoughts on how we’re going to face this head-on?

A: “Oh, that's a very good question. We’re at 7.8 billion now in 2020. We will have 10 billion more guests coming to dinner. And we are inviting them! We’ve got a responsibility to make sure our guests are properly treated, well-fed, well housed, and given the proper amenities that Mother Earth can provide them. I am an optimist; I’m very optimistic that there will be no problem with food and nutrition security. That’s what Dr. Borlaug did in the Green Revolution when people said, ‘India is a lost cause, don't even worry about it, India cannot be fed.’ There were books published on that topic, can India be fed? Ten years later, due to the Green Revolution and with the guidance of Dr. Borlaug and Dr. Swaminathan and others who were plant breeders at that time – things changed! Today, India is a food exporting nation. You could not believe that when I was a student in the early 1960s. I think there is no question that the world can feed 10 billion people.

That does not mean that I support having more population. I hope that the population stabilizes very soon. Eventually, as is the case in developed countries, the population will come down. I hope by 2100 we will start to begin to come down with the global population. Maybe by 2200, we will have 6 or 7 billion, and perhaps by 2300, we will stabilize at 3 or 4 billion.

But the question is not whether we can feed people. The question is feeding people and, at the same time, improving and restoring the environment. Feeding people by degrading the environment, water quality, climate change, loss of biodiversity, pollution of air – that is not an accomplishment. The issue is not producing more – of course we can. The issue is how to reconcile the need to continue producing more, while at the same time restoring degraded land, improving water quality, improving water renewability, improving air quality, mitigating climate change, and enhancing biodiversity. That’s the issue. And that can be done and should be done, through the science-based implementation of agriculture. Making agriculture a solution to the environmental issue, that is where in-field training is very important.”

Q: From where you sit, what role does soil science play in bringing back the environment?

A: “Well the environment has at least three components: soil, water, and air. Soil is the foundation of life; Dr. Borlaug would agree that elite varieties can do better only if they are grown under better soil conditions.

The other part is that soil is being taken for granted. We treat it as a common resource, just like we treat the atmosphere and the hydrosphere as common resources. Consequently, anything that you treat as a common resource and undervalue, you degrade. We degrade the atmosphere by global warming because we use it for our industrial byproduct. We degrade oceans because we dump our waste into the ocean. We degrade soil because we abuse it, misuse it, do not manage it properly, and take it for granted. All three [environmental components] – soil, water, and air – should be respected as very important.

There is something called the ‘One Health’ concept. The One Health concept says the health of the soil, plants, animals, people, and the environment is one and indivisible. If the health of soil goes down, the health of plants growing into it, the animals who consume those plants, people who consume those plants and animals on degraded soil, their health also goes down.

People are a mirror image of the soil they live on. You drive to the Midwest United States and you see a beautiful landscape and agriculture. You see healthy people in a healthy environment. Then, you drive through some other countries and you see that the soil is degraded, eroded, and depleted. You see the crops are poor, not growing properly, you see livestock may be eating plastic sometimes because the farmers can’t buy proper food. Drinking water is not clean, and the people, of course, are also not healthy.

When people are desperate, miserable, hungry, poverty-stricken, they pass their sufferings on to the land. The land reciprocates, and people become more impoverished and more desperate. This vicious cycle has to be broken by education that soil is the basic foundation of all life and all development; that education should begin right from primary school and continue forever.

We do not own the environment; the environment owns us. When we realize that, we will treat all water, air, vegetation, livestock, and wildlife with dignity and respect. You know, we are blessed in [the United States] with a lot of very good legislation. The [Environmental Protection Agency] has a Clean Water Act and an Air Quality Act. Did you know there is no soil quality act? I believe that it is not possible to have clean water and clean air without healthy soil. We have algal bloom problems in Lake Erie, we have problems in many of our rivers, we have anoxia problems in the Gulf, and it’s because water has to pass through the soil. I hate to call soil dirt – it is not – but if I may use that term in a rhetorical way, dirt is the best media to purify dirty water. When water does not pass through the soil, it runs along the surface carrying nutrients and manure. Then we broadcast [spray] the water that is generated through snowmelt going through the stream and we create a problem. It's about time that we respected the environment as a trinity: soil – water – air. We need legislation to protect those three precious components of the environment.”

Q: Congratulations on receiving the 2020 World Food Prize! Can you speak to some of your research leading up to winning this award?

A: “The World Food Prize is a big thing, certainly. This is something that Dr. Borlaug started, and I'm the 50th Laureate. 2020 is also the 50th anniversary of the Nobel Prize that Dr. Borlaug received.

In my case, a combination of many things: soil carbon sequestration, soil quality management, and erosion control.

Many times, people ask me, ‘How big is this award?’ Well, most people know how important a Heisman Trophy is, right? It's a big thing especially at The Ohio State University, and some people won't understand the World Food Prize in relation to a Heisman Trophy. I make a light-hearted joke comparing apples and oranges. But, just as a comparison, I mentioned to somebody that the World Food Prize is equal to 13 Heisman Trophies. Well people say, ‘Oh no way!’ The fact is, it takes somebody like me 52 years after my Ph.D. to receive the World Food Prize, but an 18-year-old person could get a Heisman Trophy in four years during college – well 52 divided by 4 is equal to 13!

I think the important part is to make a point that academically we can achieve as much as sports people can. The academic part should never be underestimated. Yes, sports are very important, but the academic part is equally important. It's a contribution to society, and both contribute! As I said, it's an apple and orange comparison, but we should emphasize both. We should celebrate the World Food Prize just as we celebrate the Heisman Trophy!”

Q: My last question is, for people who are either entering their undergraduate or master's or Ph.D., and they're studying soil science - or maybe they're still in the early days of their career and they're trying to navigate through the world - what would be some advice that you’d give to this up and coming fleet of hunger fighters?

A: “People sometimes think agriculture is probably not as important as business, medical science, IT, or basic science. I would like to state that agriculture is probably more important than some of the other things because food is humanity’s most basic need.

Agriculture is the basis of food – how can it be less important? I would also like to suggest to whoever may be [reading] that we must value agricultural education – and we don't. Let me tell you why: when you graduate with an MBA or you graduate with a degree in computer science, you get a salary which is two, three, sometimes four times the salary you get when you graduate with a degree in agronomy or agriculture. Why? Is society trying to say that agriculture is not important? If that's the case, then we need a rethinking.

Agriculture is performed by each one of us and I'm quoting here my Provost, Professor Bruce McFerrin, he said that anytime you eat food, you're doing an agricultural act. It is that simple. And we have to make sure that agricultural professions, whether it's a farmer or land manager, teacher, agronomist, plant breeder, soil scientist, entomologist - they should be respected by the society as much as any other discipline. When that happens, agriculture will be on par with other disciplines. And it's time that we did that. A soil scientist and agronomist like me, studying when to plow and not to plow and when to weed and not to weed and how to put carbon in soil, we can achieve something like the World Food Prize provided you do the best you can in your discipline.

Therefore, agriculture is very, very critical. We must give it visibility so that the best and brightest young people come to agriculture. That is what we want to see happen. You know, we need to make sure that agriculture is considered at a very high level. That means society respecting this profession on which everything depends! Food, nutrition, wellbeing, health, economic development, everything depends on it. We must do whatever we can to show that agricultural education is a high priority. It must attract the best and the brightest.”

Q: Well, Dr. Lal, thank you again for joining us. Is there anything else that you'd like to add?

A: “Thank you for having me on this program. Thank you to the Borlaug Training Foundation for supporting education in the field. It's great work, keep up the tradition! We want to make sure [Borlaug’s] legacy is maintained, and we want to attract the brightest and the best in the agriculture profession.”

This transcript has been edited for clarity.

By Linc Thomas