Agriculture

Agriculture and climate change are closely connected, with the impact of agriculture on climate change coming largely from greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from on-farm practices, as well as from soil and land use change.

Tools and Strategies for Mitigating Climate Change through Agriculture

Adapting Agriculture and the Food System

Greenhouse gas emissions

The IPCC (2007)¹ estimates that agricultural practices (not including deforestation to make way for farming or on-farm fossil fuel emissions) accounts for 14% of anthropogenic GHG emissions. In fact, IPCC’s estimate doesn’t come close to estimating the much larger global impact of our agriculture system, which includes processing, packaging distribution, transportation, buildings and retail emissions.

Many greenhouse gas emissions contributed by agriculture fall under Land Use, Land Use Change, and Forestry (LULUCF). LULUCF refers to a broad project category of activities than can cause the removal of or release to the atmosphere of greenhouse gases resulting from direct human-induced land use such as deforestation. Other sources of GHGs from agriculture come from on-farm practices and livestock.

Deforestation

The world has lost 11 million net hectares of forest each year since 2000 (Houghton 2008)². This is an area the size of the U.S. state of Virginia. Seventy percent of that area has been utilized for large-scale ranching and agriculture (Worldwatch Institute 2009)³. When emissions from peat are included in total deforestation emissions, annual forest loss has been estimated to release a total of 8.5 billion tons of CO2 equivalent (Worldwatch Institute 2009)⁴. Indonesia and Brazil, the nations with the largest areas of forest loss (FAO 2009)⁵, are now the third and fourth biggest GHG emitters among nations. This is despite their status as developing countries with low per-capita consumption compared to the US and the EU (CAIT 2009). Tropical deforestation rates drive global net deforestation rates, since temperate forest area has been roughly stable over the past several decades (FAO 2009 )⁶.

Farm practices

Several on farm practices that may contribute to climate change include:

Fertilizers: Fertilizers are widely used in agriculture to help promote plant, fruit, and flower growth. Inappropriate use of fertilizers can have negative impacts on climate. As a result, a variety of problems are created inluding releasing nitrous oxide into the atmosphere, a known green house gas.

Tillage: Tillage is the agricultural preparation of the soil by ploughing, ripping, or turning it. This can cause problems by actually stripping nutrients out of the soil and compact lower layers of soil. In addition, the tractor trips across the field ripping up the land add up to many carbon dioxide emissions with the burning of diesel.
Slash and Burn: The slash and burn technique of field preparation is categorized through the cutting of vegetation on a plot of land and implementing fire which burns the vegetation, and thus prepares the field for cultivation. After seasons of cultivation, the nutrient quality of the soil decreases, and a consequent decrease in crop yields lead to an abandonment of the plot of land. The burning of the vegetation releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Livestock

Income growth is correlated with increased consumption and imports of food and animal feed in the developing world, as people shift their diets away from staples to include more meat, dairy, processed foods, and vegetable oils (USDA ERS 2009)⁷. Meat production is projected to more than double by 2050, while milk production is projected to increase by 80% in the same time period (Steinfeld et al. 2006)⁸.This means livestock raising will continue to burgeon.

Livestock’s ecological footprint is already daunting. More than a quarter of the Earth’s land surface is used for grazing, and one third of all cropland is used to grow feed for animals (Steinfeld et al. 2006)⁹. All together, land use for livestock takes up 70% of agricultural land (Steinfeld et al. 2006)¹⁰. Eating higher on the food chain is less efficient as it takes more grain and protein meal to feed livestock to feed people than it does to feed people a given number of calories directly, making vegetarian diets up to five times more efficient form a land use and climate perspective, compared to meat-intensive diets (Cornell University 2007)¹¹.

Brazil has the world’s largest commercial cattle herd and is the top exporter of beef (USDA FAS 2009)¹². Conversion of forests to cattle ranches is the biggest cause of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon (Fearnside 2008)¹³. Seventy percent of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon is due to medium to large sized cattle ranches (Fearnside 2005)¹⁴ and around 80% of the total deforested land is used for cattle grazing (Amigos da Terra– Amazônia Brasileira 2009¹⁵; Greenpeace 2009a¹⁶).

Footnotes

1. IPCC. 2007a. Climate Change 2007 Synthesis Report: Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Core Writing Team, Pachauri, R.K. and Reisinger, A. (Eds.) IPCC, Geneva, Switzerland. pp 104. Available at http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/ar4-syr.htm

2. Houghton, R. 2008. Carbon Flux to the Atmosphere from Land-Use Changes: 1850-2005. In TRENDS: A Compendium of Data on Global Change. Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy, Oak Ridge, Tenn., U.S.A

3. Worldwatch Institute. 2009. State of the World 2009. Into a Warming World. New York. 266pp.

4. Worldwatch Institute. 2009. State of the World 2009. Into a Warming World. New York. 266pp.

5. FAO. 2009. State of the World’s Forests 2009.

6. FAO. 2009. State of the World’s Forests 2009.

7. USDA Economic Research Service (ERS). 2009. Agricultural Baseline Projections: Macroeconomic Assumptions, 2009-2018. 106 pp. Available at http://www.usda.gov/oce/commodity/ar...ctions2018.pdf (Accessed on April 15, 2009)

8. Steinfeld, H., P. Gerber, T. Wassenaar, V. Castel, M. Rosales and C. de Haan (2006) Livestock’s long shadow – environmental issues and options. Food and Agricultural Organization, Rome, Italy. Available online at: www.virtualcentre.org/en/library/key_pub/longshad/A0701E00.pdf

9. Steinfeld, H., P. Gerber, T. Wassenaar, V. Castel, M. Rosales and C. de Haan (2006) Livestock’s long shadow – environmental issues and options. Food and Agricultural Organization, Rome, Italy. Available online at: www.virtualcentre.org/en/library/key_pub/longshad/A0701E00.pdf

10. Steinfeld, H., P. Gerber, T. Wassenaar, V. Castel, M. Rosales and C. de Haan (2006) Livestock’s long shadow – environmental issues and options. Food and Agricultural Organization, Rome, Italy. Available online at: www.virtualcentre.org/en/library/key_pub/longshad/A0701E00.pdf

11. Cornell University. 2007. Diet With A Little Meat Uses Less Land Than Many Vegetarian Diets. ScienceDaily. Available at http://www.sciencedaily.com /releases/2007/10/071008130203.htm (accessed 22 May, 2009)

12. USDA FAS (Foreign Agricultural Service). 2009. Searchable database available at http://www.fas.usda.gov/psdonline/psdQuery.aspx

13. Fearnside, P. M. 2008. The roles and movements of actors in the deforestation of Brazilian Amazonia. Ecology and Society 13(1): 23. Available at http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol13/iss1/art23/

14. Fearnside, P.M. 2005. Deforestation in Brazilian Amazonia: History, Rates, and Consequences. Conservation Biology 19: 680-688.

15. Amigos da Terra– Amazônia Brasileira. 2009. A hora da Conta– Pecuária, Amazônia e Conjuntura. Amigos da Terra– Amazônia Brasileira. Available online at: http://www.amazonia.org.br/arquivos/313449.pdf

16. Greenpeace. 2009a. Amazon Cattle Footprint: Mato Grosso: State of Destruction. 16 pp. Available at http://www.greenpeace.org/raw/conten...print-mato.pdf

20. Wertz-Kanounnikoff, S. and M. Kongphan-Apirak. 2008. Reducing forest emissions in Southeast Asia: A review of drivers of land-use change and how payments for environmental services (PES) schemes can affect them. CIFOR Working Paper No. 41. Available at http://www.cifor.cgiar.org/Publicati...&pid=2604&pf=1

22. RSB. 2009. The Roundtable on Sustainable Biofuels. CEN Energy Centre. http://cgse.epfl.ch/page65660.html

0. IPCC. 2007a. Climate Change 2007 Synthesis Report: Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Core Writing Team, Pachauri, R.K. and Reisinger, A. (Eds.) IPCC, Geneva, Switzerland. pp 104. Available at http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/ar4-syr.htm

0. Steinfeld, H., P. Gerber, T. Wassenaar, V. Castel, M. Rosales and C. de Haan (2006) Livestock’s long shadow – environmental issues and options. Food and Agricultural Organization, Rome, Italy. Available online at: www.virtualcentre.org/en/library/key_pub/longshad/A0701E00.pdf

0. FAOSTAT. 2009. FAO Resource STAT. Land. Updated April 30th 2009. Available online at: http://faostat.fao.org (accessed October 2007). Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Rome.

0. Climate Change 2007 Synthesis Report: Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Core Writing Team, Pachauri, R.K. and Reisinger, A. (Eds.) IPCC, Geneva, Switzerland. pp 104. Available at http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/ar4-syr.htm

0. Barreto, P., Pereira, R. and E. Arema. 2008a. A Pecuária e o Desmatamento na Amazônia na Era das Mudanças Climáticas. Belém, PA: Instituto do Homem e Meio Ambiente da Amazônia, 2008. Available online at: http://www.imazon.org.br/novo2008/ar...climaticas.pdf

0. Greenpeace. 2009a. Amazon Cattle Footprint: Mato Grosso: State of Destruction. 16 pp. Available at http://www.greenpeace.org/raw/conten...print-mato.pdf

0. California Goevernment Department of Fish and Game. http://www.dfg.ca.gov/habcon/conplan/mitbank/

0. New South Wales Goverment Department of Environment and Climate Change. http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/biobanking/

0. Tubifex

0. undefined

0. Fearnside, P.M. 2005. Deforestation in Brazilian Amazonia: History, Rates, and Consequences. Conservation Biology 19: 680-688.

0. undefined

Resources

Bayon, Ricardo. Making Environmental Markets Work. (I believe this is the paper he referenced during out last call) http://ecosystemmarketplace.com/pages/article.library.others.php?component_id=1045&component_version_id=1819&language_id=12

Butler, R.A. and W.F. Laurance. 2008. New strategies for conserving tropical forests. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, Volume 23, Issue 9, pp. 469-472.

Butler, R.A. and W.F. Laurance 2009. Is oil palm the next emerging threat to the Amazon? Tropical Conservation Science Vol.2(1):1-10

Ecosystem Marketplace. http://www.ecosystemmarketplace.com/

Butler, R.A., Koh, L.P., and Ghazoul, J. 2009. REDD in the red: palm oil could undermine carbon payment schemes. Conservation Letters DOI: 10.1111/j.1755-263X.2009.00047.x

Butler, R.A. and W.F. Laurance 2009. Is oil palm the next emerging threat to the Amazon? Tropical Conservation Science Vol.2(1):1-10, 2009 (Mongabay.com Open Access Journal), http://tropicalconservationscience.mongabay.com/content/v2/09-03-23_butler-laurance_1-10.pdf, accessed 30/3/09

Butler, R.A. and W.F. Laurance. 2008. New strategies for conserving tropical forests. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, Volume 23, Issue 9, pp. 469-472
http://news.mongabay.com/Butler_and_Laurance-TREE.pdf

Campbell, A., V. Kapos, I. Lysenko, J. Scharlemann, B. Dickson, H. Gibbs, M. Hansen, and L. Miles. 2008. Carbon emissions from forest loss in protected areas: Summary. UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre. 7 pp.

Cerri, C. E. P., Easter, M., Paustian, K., Killian, K., Coleman, K., Bernoux, M., Falloon, P., Powlson, D. S., Batjes, N. H., Milne, E.,Cerri, C. C. 2007. Predicted soil organic carbon stocks and changes in the Brazilian Amazon between 2000 and 2030. Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment, 122(1), 58-72

Cornell University. 2007. Diet With A Little Meat Uses Less Land Than Many Vegetarian Diets. ScienceDaily. Available at http://www.sciencedaily.com /releases/2007/10/071008130203.htm (accessed 22 May, 2009)

Dros, J.M. 2004. Managing the Soy Boom: Two scenarios of soy production expansion in South America. AIDEnvironment, Amsterdam. Commissioned by WWF.

The Economist. 2009a. Biofools: Farming biofuels produces nitrous oxide. This is bad for climate change. April 8, 2009. p. 81.

The Economist. 2009b. Dancing with the bear: A soya king’s change of heart on the rainforest. April 16, 2009, pp. .

Fearnside, P.M. 2005. Deforestation in Brazilian Amazonia: History, Rates, and Consequences. Conservation Biology Vol.19, No. 3.

FAO. 2009. State of the World’s Forests 2009.

FAO. 2006. Livestock's long shadow: environmental issues and options. 24 pp.

FAOSTAT. 2009. FAO Resource STAT. Land. Updated April 30th 2009. Available online at: http://faostat.fao.org (accessed October 2007). Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Rome.

Fargione et al. 2008. Land Clearing and the Biofuel Carbon Debt. Science. 1235-1238 DOI: 10.1126/science.1152747 (i only have hard copy; Greg can you get thru JStor?

Fearnside, P.M. 2005. Deforestation in Brazilian Amazonia: History, Rates, and Consequences. Conservation Biology 19: 680-688.

Fearnside, P. M. 2008. The roles and movements of actors in the deforestation of Brazilian Amazonia. Ecology and Society 13(1): 23. Available at http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol13/iss1/art23/

Forest Stewardship Council. 2002. FSC principles and criteria for forest stewardship. FSC-STD-01-001 (version 4-0) EN ()

Gelder, J.W. van and J.M. Dros. 2002. Corporate actors in the South American Soy Production Chains. Profundo/AIDEnvironment, Castricum / Amsterdam.

Gibbs, H.K., M. Johnston, J. Foley, T. Holloway, C. Monfreda, N. Ramankutty, and
D. Zaks. 2008. Carbon payback times for crop-based biofuel expansion in the tropics: the effects of changing yield and technology. Environ. Res. Lett. 3 (2008) 034001 (10pp).

Gibbs, H. K., S. Brown, J.O. Niles, and J.A. Foley. 2007. Monitoring and estimating tropical forest carbon stocks: making REDD a reality. Environmental Research Letters 2

Grain. 2007. Corporate power: Agrofuels and the expansion of agribusiness. The Seedling, July 2007, pp. 10-24.

Houghton, R. 2008. Carbon Flux to the Atmosphere from Land-Use Changes: 1850-2005. In TRENDS: A Compendium of Data on Global Change. Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy, Oak Ridge, Tenn., U.S.A

IPCC. 2007. Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis.Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Solomon, S., D. Qin, M. Manning, Z. Chen, M. Marquis, K.B.M.Tignor and H.L. Miller (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA, 996 pp.#

IPCC. 2007a. Climate Change 2007 Synthesis Report: Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Core Writing Team, Pachauri, R.K. and Reisinger, A. (Eds.) IPCC, Geneva, Switzerland. pp 104. Available at http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/ar4-syr.htm

Kindermann, G., M. Obersteiner, B. Sohngen, J. Sathaye, K. Andrasko, E. Rametsteiner, B. Schlamadinger, S. Wunder and R. Beach. 2009. Global cost estimates of reducing carbon emissions through avoided deforestation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) Vol.105, No.30, pp. 10302-10307

Lewis, S, G. Lopez-Gonzalez, B. Sonke, K. Affum-Baffoe, T.R. Baker, L.O. Ojo, O.L. Phillips, J.M. Reitsma, L.White, J.A. Comiskey, M. Djuikouo, C.E.N. Ewango, T.R. Reldpausch, A.C. Hamilton, M.Gloor, T. Hart, A. Hladick, J. Lloyd, J.C. Lovett, J. Makana, Y. Malhi, F.M. Mbago, H.J. Ndangalasi, J. Peacock, K.S.H. Peh, D. Sheil, T. Sunderland, M.D. Swaine, J. Taplin, D. Taylor, S.C. Thomas, R. Votere, and H.Woll. 2009. Increasing carbon storage in intact African tropical forests. Nature 457, 1003-1006

Margulis, S. 2003. Causes of deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon. World Bank.

Mediera, Erin C. Myers. 2008. Policies to Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) in Developing Countries: An examination of the issues facing the incorporation of REDD into market-based climate policies. Resources for the Future, Washington D.C. 82 pp.

Morton, D. C., DeFries, R. S., Shimabukuro, Y. E., Anderson, L. O., Arai, E., del Bon Espirito-Santo, F., Freitas, R., Morisette, J. 2006. Cropland expansion changes deforestation dynamics in the southern Brazilian Amazon. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 103, 14 637–14 641. (Vol.103, No.39.)

Mulhollem, J. 2008. Fueling a Hungry World: Developing biofuel feedstocks that don’t cut into food supply. Penn State Agriculture Magazine. Summer/Fall 2008, Pp. 9-13
NASA Earth Observatory (http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Deforestation/deforestation_update3.php)

Oliveira, P.J.C., G.P. Asner, D.E. Knapp, A. Almeyda, R. F. Raybin, A. Almeyda, R. Galván-Gildemeister, R.C. Smith, and S. Keene. (2007). Land-Use Allocation Protects the Peruvian Amazon. Science Vol.317 31 AUGUST 2007
(protected area designation work in Peru – have potential. Areas occupied by indig. people contained only 9-11%of total disturbance)

Philip M. Fearnside, William F. Laurance (2004) TROPICAL DEFORESTATION AND GREENHOUSE-GAS EMISSIONS. Ecological Applications: Vol. 14, No. 4, pp. 982-986. (insisting that the impact of deforestation is substantial for global warming)

Searchinger et al Use of U.S. Croplands for Biofuels Increases Greenhouse Gases Through Emissions from Land Use Change, Science 319:1238-40 (2008).

Stanford News Service. 2009. Biofuels boom could fuel rainforest destruction, Stanford researcher warns.
USDA Agricultural Projections to 2018. Office of the Chief Economist, World Agricultural Outlook Board, U.S. Department of Agriculture. Prepared by the Interagency Agricultural Projections Committee. Long-term Projections Report OCE-2009-1, 100 pp.

Steinfeld, H., P. Gerber, T. Wassenaar, V. Castel, M. Rosales and C. de Haan (2006) Livestock’s long shadow – environmental issues and options. Food and Agricultural Organization, Rome, Italy. Available online at: www.virtualcentre.org/en/library/key_pub/longshad/A0701E00.pdf

USDA Economic Research Service (ERS). 2009. Agricultural Baseline Projections: Macroeconomic Assumptions, 2009-2018. 106 pp. Available at http://www.usda.gov/oce/commodity/ar...ctions2018.pdf (Accessed on April 15, 2009)

USDA FAS (Foreign Agricultural Service). 2009. Searchable database available at http://www.fas.usda.gov/psdonline/psdQuery.aspx

Vermeulen, S. and N. Goad. 2006. Towards better practice in smallholder palm oil production. International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED)

Weyburn, L.A., J.F. Franklin, J.C. Gordon, C.S. Binkley, D.J. Mladenoff, N.L. Christensen Jr. 2007. Forest Carbon in the United States: Opportunities & Options for Private Lands. The Pacific Forest Trust, (44pp).

Worldwatch Institute. 2009. 2009 State of the World: Into a Warming World. 262 pp.

Worldwatch Institute. 2009. State of the World 2009. Into a Warming World. New York. 266pp.

Powered by Climate Lab