Managing Ecological Footprints of Agriculture and Food Systems

Prof. Rattan Lal is the Director of the Carbon Management and Sequestration Center (C-MASC) of The Ohio State University and the Goodwill Ambassador of the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) for Sustainable Development Issues. He served as President of the International Union of Soil Sciences (2017-2018). Prof. Lal is ranked 111 on the list of the World's 100,000 Most Productive and Influential Scientists, and 1st in the field of Agriculture and Agronomy (from Stanford University's Top 2% of the World's Top Scientists list).

Prof. Lal won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize as a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, won the 2019 Japan Prize for sustainable soil management, in recognition of global food security and climate change mitigation, won the 2020 World Food Prize for restoring and conserving natural resources and mitigating climate change. He was appointed by U.S. President Joe Biden as a new member of the Committee on International Food and Agricultural Development (BIFAD) in February 2022. In announcing the appointment, the White House highlighted Professor Lal's relationship with IICA, noting that the scientist is “widely recognized as a pioneer in soil-centric agricultural management, improving global food security and developing climate-resilient agriculture through soil carbon management and sequestration, sustainable soil management and soil health.”