Farming for soil health

Dear Prime Minister,

I am calling on you to explore the subject of sustainable agriculture. Specifically, agricultural methods modelled to support soil health. Our current model of agriculture supports widespread use of chemical fertilizer, fungicides, herbicides and pesticides. The results of this practice has led to widespread soil loss and further increase in atmospheric carbon. Growing healthy soil is the only action with the potential to draw down our accumulated legacy load of atmospheric carbon. Even if we reduce our carbon footprint dramatically, we will still have a century worth of carbon in the atmosphere. By shifting our national agricultural strategy towards soil health we will in effect be growing soil as well as crops. Soil is a carbon rich and living ecosystem capable of sustaining life. If practiced on a national scale sustainable farming could sequester billions of tons of carbon. By increasing taxes on chemical fertilizers, pesticides, fungicides and herbicides, and by investing those tax dollars in sustainable agriculture we can begin to make a meaningful impact on our environment and on the health of the land which sustains us.