“Big Ag” Wins Kudos for Being “Green”

Terry D. Etherton

Scientists at Stanford University have published provocative new findings that agriculture’s “Green Revolution” has greatly reduced forest clear-cutting and resulting climate-warming emissions.  This is a remarkable (but not unexpected) benefit of contemporary production agriculture, and the application of technologies (and biotechnologies) that have boosted efficiency of food production.  Because agricultural “advancements” like fertilizers and genetically engineered crops have boosted yields, there has been less need to slash and burn for additional fields, and this has meant fewer carbon emissions, the report says. The study, titled “Greenhouse Gas Mitigation by Agricultural Intensification,” was published in the June 29 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

The report notes that advances in high-yield production agricultural technologies over the latter part of the 20th century have prevented massive amounts of greenhouse gases from entering the atmosphere—the equivalent of 590 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide. The researchers estimate that if not for increased yields, additional greenhouse gas emissions from clearing land for farming would have been equal to as much as a third of the world’s total output of greenhouse gases since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution in 1850.

There is an important context to the paper – agriculture currently only accounts for about 12 percent of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. Although greenhouse gas emissions from the production and use of fertilizer have increased with agricultural intensification, it must be appreciated that these emissions are far outstripped by the quantity of emissions that would have been generated in converting additional forest and grassland to farmland.

The report goes a step beyond highlighting the environmental benefits of high-yield, contemporary production agriculture.  “Our results dispel the notion that modern intensive agriculture is inherently worse for the environment than a more ‘old-fashioned’ way of doing things,” said Jennifer Burney, lead author of the paper.

The researchers also calculated that for every dollar spent on agricultural research and development since 1961, emissions of the three principal greenhouse gases – methane, nitrous oxide and carbon dioxide – were reduced by the equivalent of about a quarter of a ton of carbon dioxide – a high rate of financial return compared to other approaches implemented for reducing the gases.

The research team concluded that improvement of crop yields should be prominent among a portfolio of strategies to reduce global greenhouse gases emissions in the future.  This is a “ringing endorsement” for the need to increase funding for discovery agricultural research that enhances crop yields and production efficiency (i.e., more grain per acre).

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