The realities of climate change, conservation agriculture and soil carbon sequestration

The catastrophic bushfires experienced in south eastern Australia during the southern summer of 2020 have provided humanity with a timely reminder of the true horrors that can unfold in a rapidly warming world. As the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and offset them with carbon sequestration gains urgency, much is made of the potential for agricultural soils to act as a carbon sinks (Poulton et al. 2018). It is therefore timely that the study of Sun et al. (2020) in this issue delivers a dose of realism about the potential for conservation agriculture to sequester carbon in cropping soils across the globe, and its relationship with agricultural productivity.