Building soil to reduce climate change impacts on global crop yield

Improving soil health and resilience is fundamental for sustainable food production, however the role of soil in maintaining or boosting crop productivity under climate change is still unclear. Here, we examined the role of soil in yield response to climate warming for four major crops (i.e., maize, wheat, rice and soybean), using global-scale datasets and machine learning techniques. We found that each ℃ of warming have reduced global yields of maize by 3.4%, wheat by 2.4%, rice by 0.3% and soybean by 5.0%, which are high spatial heterogeneous with positive impacts in certain regions. Soil organic carbon (SOC) would dominantly regulate negative yield responses. Improving SOC could build yield resilience to warming, avoiding an average of 3-5% °C–1 of warming-induced yield loss over 60% of global planting area. The avoided loss of production in future could supply additional food for up to ~560 million people
in 2050. Our findings highlight the critical role of soil in reducing warming impacts on food security, especially for developing regions, given that sustainable actions could be taken broadly.