Healthy Soils Testimony, Environmental Bond Bill

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Good afternoon. It is an honor to be here today. I am Seth Itzkan, co-founder of Soil4Climate Inc. We are a nonprofit organization advocating for soil as a climate solution. I am here with my co-founder colleague Karl Thidemann.  

Karl and I are honored to be giving testimony today on behalf of this Massachusetts environmental bond bill. This includes provisions for healthy soils as part of a larger package that also includes climate change adaptation.  

We are delighted to have contributed to the language of H.3713 "An Act to Promote Healthy Soils,” from which the soils provisions in the proposed environmental bond bill are taken.  

Soil restoration is essential to help mitigate the climate crisis. Reducing or even eliminating fossil fuel emissions will not prevent the disaster of global warming that is already upon us. Only active measures to draw carbon out of the air complemented with a cessation of fossil fuel burning, can give us hope of a livable future.  

Fortunately, the measures needed to draw carbon out of the air are exactly the same that restore our soils to give us healthy food and ecosystems, and are the basis of an innovation called Regenerative Agriculture.  

The definition for regenerative agriculture included in the bond bill is as follows, “Regenerative agriculture”, agriculture that improves the health of soils, including but not limited to consideration of depth of topsoil horizons, water infiltration rate, organic carbon content, bulk density, biological activity, biological diversity, and bare ground, and as achieved through practices such as conservation tillage or no-till, cover-cropping, planned grazing, integrated crop-livestock systems, synthetic chemicals reduction, and other methodologies…”  

Some of the urgency and intellectual legacy of this work come from an acknowledgment of the severity of the climate crisis and the large role that regenerative agriculture can play in mitigating it.  

In 2009, research by Susan Solomon of MIT showed that (quote) “Climate change that takes place due to increases in carbon dioxide concentration is largely irreversible for 1,000 years after emissions stop.”  

Four years later, in 2013, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) stated, “A large fraction of anthropogenic climate change resulting from CO2 emissions is irreversible on a multi-century to millennial time scale, except in the case of a large net removal of CO2 from the atmosphere over a sustained period.”  

Studies suggest that soil restoration efforts may draw down many billions of tons of carbon per year. Regenerative agriculture can be a way to achieve that “large net removal of CO2,” and, of course, there are numerous co-benefits.  

Soil4Climate recently launched a land restoration project in Kenya, working with a Maasai community.  

In solidarity with our Maasai friends … I wish to hold the Maasai talking stick and state in their language,  

Ore olo-roro modiok enkiteng' nemeye. One who stands on cow dung will never die.  

I would like us to interpret this allegory as meaning: “A culture that maintains healthy soil will persevere.”  

We in Massachusetts, and people globally, can be this culture. Thank you.