Philanthropist Howard Buffett

Could the next green revolution be brown? Philanthropist Howard Buffett, who has joined Microsoft founder Bill Gatesin pouring money into agriculture development, used an appearance at the World Food Prize symposium on Wednesday to call for a “brown revolution” that would involve boosting food production through improving the soil.

And the theme continued during the symposium on Thursday and at a side event sponsored by the Worldwatch Institute, a group that focuses on sustainability issues in agriculture.

Conserving organic matter in the soil will improve fertility while also reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

“Across the globe, north, south, east and west, we have major problems in the soil,” said Hans Herren, past World Food Prize laureate.

Brian Halweil of Worldwatch said that improving soil fertility through mulching, reducing tillage or planting cover crops has been shown to increase corn yields in Kenya by at least 20 percent.

Herren said more money needs to be put into measures like educating farmers on how to make compost properly.

Rolf Derpsch, a conservation expert and a panelist during the symposium, said that about 25 million acres of agricultural land is lost to soil degradation every year, with the worst losses in the tropics and sub-tropics. He said that plowing is a leading cause of the problem and that no-till farming “can no longer be ignored” as a solution, he said.

In the United States, farmers have been conserving soil through the use of genetically modified herbicide-immune seeds that make it easier to grow soybeans and corn without plowing between crops. An official with biotech seed giant Syngenta said the benefits (of no-till farming) “we’ve seen in the developed world are even more needed in the developing world.”