America’s soil health is in dire straits and a new investment fund, rePlant Capital, has been formed to help clove the crisis with capitalism by tying interest rates for farm loans to improvements in soil’s carbon and water storage as a way to save farmers from the disastrous impacts of climate change.
A third of the country’s topsoil has eroded in the past 50 years, part of a warning from the United Nations in 2015 that predicts soil degradation will be one of the central threats to human health in the coming decades. Farmers are seeking to regenerate soil after decades of misuse from chemical fertilizers and herbicides, but transitioning to less harsh farming practices is costly, and nature cannot solve the problem according to human timeline, requiring 500 years or more to create an inch of fresh topsoil under natural conditions.
Read the full story here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/chloesorvino/2020/09/11/can-loans-tied-to-soil-health-save-agriculture-a-new-250-million-fund-wants-to-find-out/#605f42641f0b