Healthy Eating 101 Green and Sustainable Eating Why Our Future Depends on Healthy Soil Larry Clemens, director of North America's Agricultural Program at The Nature Conservancy, has been working with farmers and ranchers to improve the health of their soil. By Shaun Dreisbach Shaun Dreisbach Award-winning writer and editor, Shaun Dreisbach was executive editor of EatingWell until its last issue in 2022. In addition to overseeing the editorial content of the magazine, she also handled features on nutrition and health, sustainability, the environment, industry trends and food policy. Shaun has more than 20 years of experience working at and contributing to leading print and digital publications including Glamour, Self, Parents, Real Simple, Working Mother, Dr. Oz The Good Life, Teen Vogue, American Baby, FamilyFun and USA Weekend. She has also authored several nutrition, cooking and weight-loss books for bestselling authors and celebrity nutritionists. EatingWell's Editorial Guidelines Published on June 21, 2018 Share Tweet Pin Email Most of us don't give a second thought to the earth beneath our feet. It's humble. It's unassuming. It's dirt. To Larry Clemens, though, soil could very well be our environmental and agricultural savior. Healthy soil is rich in nutrients, which translates to more robust crops and less need for chemical fertilizers. It also acts like a sponge, soaking up rainwater so it doesn't run off and erode farmland, and holding it for times of drought. Perhaps most important: well-tended soil can help mitigate climate change, thanks to its immense capacity to trap and store carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Yet conventional tillage practices have caused our nation's soils to lose as much as 60 percent of their stores of this greenhouse gas. They also rack up more than $85 billion in societal and environmental costs annually from factors including reduced water quality, increased energy usage and loss of both productivity and biodiversity. 2018 EatingWell American Food Heroes Last year, Clemens helped spearhead an initiative to right that wrong. In partnership with General Mills and nonprofits (including Soil Health Partnership and Soil Health Institute), The Nature Conservancy launched a $20 million plan to work with farmers and ranchers to improve the health of their soil. "Our goal is to see at least half of all U.S. row-crop lands (primarily wheat, corn and soy) using better soil-health practices by 2025," he says. Considering the fact that 58 percent of all farmland is devoted to just these three crops, the impact would be profound. And it's a move that will benefit not just the environment, but the farmers as well-to the tune of $37 million a year for every 1 percent of land that is transformed, thanks to better productivity and reduced energy costs. Clemens has championed just about every environmental issue you can think of during his 26 years with The Nature Conservancy-from helping small farmers adopt best practices like cover crops and nutrient management to pushing legislation to preserve our land and waterways. But this is arguably his most fundamental cause yet. "Healthy soils are the cornerstone of life," he says. "They're totally necessary for our future. And the farmers that are starting to use our practices have become true believers in the benefits." 3 Cool Facts About Larry Clemens Larry's food hero: "Jerry Lynch [chief sustainability officer] at General Mills. I think Jerry is doing a wonderful job right now in leading this connection between our food production, sustainability and agriculture." Surprising fact: Larry has personally planted more than 5 million trees all across the Midwest on weekends and vacations. Best advice for home gardeners: "The more living roots that you can keep in the soil year-round, the better the quality of your soil and ultimately the better the quality of the vegetables you'll grow." More American Food Heroes Meet the Man Responsible for Getting Trans Fats Out of Our Food Celebrity Chef Tom Colicchio Is on a Mission to End Hunger for Veterans EPIC Founders Are Changing the Meat Industry One Protein Bar at a Time Unilever's Plan to Curb Wasteful Packaging Impacts All of Us-for the Better This Chef Is Working with Doctors to Prescribe Food as Medicine, and It's Making Patients Healthier More Healthy Recipes Was this page helpful? Thanks for your feedback! Tell us why! Other Submit