Meet Rattan Lal, the man who won agriculture's Nobel -- World Food Prize

Eminent Indian-American soil scientist Dr Rattan Lal, who won the prestigious World Food Prize 2020, draws his inspiration from Shastras and Puranas that direct human beings to pay attention to mother earth.

Dr Lal, 75, was on Thursday named the recipient of the $250,000 World Food Prize, considered to be equivalent to a Nobel Prize for agriculture, in recognition of his contribution to increasing the global food supply by helping small farmers improve their farmland soil's health.

Also read — Indian-American soil scientist Rattan Lal gets 2020 World Food Prize

“So this award to a soil scientist highlights the importance of restoring and managing soil health. WE need to give more attention to Dharti Mata (mother earth). Our Shastras and Puranas also indicated that we must pay respect to Dharti Mata. So this award means a lot to me," Dr Lal told PTI in an interview.

Dr Lal, who serves as Distinguished University Professor of Soil Science and founding Director of the Carbon Management & Sequestration Center at The Ohio State University (OSU), has promoted innovative soil-saving techniques benefiting the livelihoods of more than 50 crore small farmers throughout his career, spanning more than five decades

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

The foundation said that Lal will receive the 2020 World Food Prize for developing and mainstreaming a soil-centric approach to increasing food production that restores and conserves natural resources and mitigates climate change.

Connect with soil

“I believe soil is a living thing. That’s what soil health means, soil is life. Every living thing has rights. Therefore, soil also has rights,” Dr Lal said. “As long as you are consuming the natural resources - food, water, elements - coming from the soil, you owe it to soil to put something back, to give something back, whatever you can.”

“Soil science has been recognised by this award. I feel very happy about it,” he said after the announcement. He added that he would donate the $250,000 award money for future soil research and education.

Dr Lal believes that "if soils are not restored, crops will fail even if rains do not...and humanity will suffer even with great scientific strides." He had once said that political stability and global peace are threatened because of soil degradation, food insecurity, and desperateness. “For future generations, it is very important that soil resources must be protected, preserved, restored and enhanced. That is where the future of humanity lies.”

The eminent soil scientist had also called for the immediate stopping of the burning of crop residue in states like Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana. Stubble burning in Punjab and Haryana is a major cause of air pollution not only in the two states but also in Delhi, the national capital. The two states annually generate 220 lakh tonne and 65 lakh tonne of paddy stubble, respectively.

“Taking everything away from land is not good for the land. There is a law of return. Whatever you take from the earth, you must return it back,” he said.

Lal said the award is especially important because the first recipient of this prestigious award in 1987 was Indian agricultural scientist Dr M S Swaminathan, the father of India’s Green Revolution. “I think Prime Minister (Narendra) Modi can do quite a lot on that part, improving soil health and (launch a) soil health movement,” he said.

Roots in India

Rattan Lal estimates he was born in 1944 in the small farming village of Karyal in West Punjab, India. In 1947, when India gained independence, Lal’s Hindu family found themselves in the newly partitioned Pakistan. They departed and resettled as refugees in Rajaund, Haryana, India, about 100 miles northwest of Delhi.

His journey to become Soil Scientist

In Rajaund, Lal’s father farmed a much smaller plot of land of only a few acres, using the traditional farming methods that rely on manual labour and oxen to raise wheat, chickpeas, rice and sugarcane. Lal looked after the family’s small herd of cattle.

It was then that Lal first became curious about soil. He recalls watching his father, uncle and brother ploughing the fields with oxen in temperatures reaching above 45 degree Celsius. The ground was very hard -- all the crop, including the straw, was removed at every harvest; nothing was returned to the land. Lal wondered at the time about the difficulty of ploughing the land, and why ploughing was even needed.

Lal had the chance to study soils more upon entering Punjab Agricultural University in Ludhiana after earning a scholarship for graduating at the top of his class from his two-room school in Rajaund in 1959. As neither of his two older siblings was ever able to attend school, Lal felt as though he studied for them as well, motivating him to study hard. He completed his high school assignments by the light of a kerosene lamp in the evening.

In his first year of college, he ran four miles to school every morning. His application and fortitude were recognised by his soil science professor and mentor, Prof D R Bhumbla, who encouraged Lal to continue his studies at Prof Bhumbla’s own alma mater, The Ohio State University.

At the time, attending school in the United States hardly seemed possible, but after earning his MSc degree at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute in Delhi, Lal went on to do just that. In 1965, he boarded a plane for the first time and travelled more than 7,000 miles to OSU to pursue his PhD.

After graduating from OSU in 1968 with his PhD in Soils, Lal travelled to the University of Sydney as a postdoctoral researcher. Soon after his arrival in Australia, he received an invitation from Dr Herb Albrecht, whom he had met at Ohio State University, for creating a soil physics laboratory in Nigeria. In December 1969, Lal travelled to Ibadan, Nigeria, to take up the post of Soil Physicist at International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA).

Lal and his wife, Sukhvarsha S Lal, remained in Nigeria for eighteen years, where their four children were born and they weathered the end of civil war and three government coups.