Henry Janzen

Henry Janzen is an Honorary Research Associate with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Lethbridge, Alberta. As a soil biochemist, he has studied the flows of carbon and nutrients through farmlands, looking for ways to sustain their many functions: furnishing food, providing livelihoods, maintaining biodiversity, buffering climate, among others. He has written extensively about the role of soils in mitigating climate change, participating in various international forums. Other topics of his research have included soil nitrogen dynamics, whole-farm greenhouse gas modelling, restorative cropping systems, and the place of livestock in ecosystems. More recently, he has contemplated how solar energy streams through our ecosystems, impelling their many and varied functions, ever-renewing their health. In all of these inquiries, Henry has sought a long-term narrative, reaching far into the past by probing soils’ memory, and peering ahead, trying to foresee how today’s choices shape the land for all its future inhabitants.