Agricultural Intensification Decreases Greenhouse Gas Emission

There is an increasing demand for ways to avoid greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions brought about by climate change. Agricultural practices such as application of fertilizer have been claimed as one of the causes of high GHG emissions.Thus, increasing the budget on agricultural intensification has not been considered as a way to lessen GHG emission. Researcher Jennifer Burney of Standford University and colleagues estimated the net effect of historical agricultural intensification on GHG emissions from 1961 to 2005. They found out that fertilizer production and application have increased during that period but because of the higher yields brought about by such practices, 161 gigatons of carbon (GtC) emission have been avoided since 1961. The researchers estimated that for every dollar invested in agricultural yields, there is a 68 kg decrease in carbon emissions in relation to the 1961 technology, preventing 3.6 GtC every year. This analysis implies that investment in yield improvements could also be considered along with the other proposed mitigation schemes.

The open-access article released by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America is available at http://www.pnas.org/content/107/26/12052.full.