A Complex Issue: The Impact of High Yield Agriculture on Climate Change?

A recently released study makes an important point on agriculture’s effect on climate change. The perspective on the positive contribution of increases in agricultural productivity on the potential production of greenhouse gas emissions comes from an unexpected source—Stanford University. This should help broaden the discussion of how agriculture can help combat climate change and introduce some surprising new metrics.

The report concludes that the historical increases in productivity of high-yield or intensive agriculture resulted in less total greenhouse gas emissions. High-yield agriculture, which includes the use of chemical fertilizers, biotechnology,  and mechanization, not only increased the amount of food, feed and fiber produced, but the study found that it also helped  reduce the potential size of agriculture’s carbon footprint.  According to the report, growing and producing more food on less land prevented the conversion of forests, savannahs and native soils to farmland – and that land conversion releases considerable amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, possibly as much as 590 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide during the 44 year study period.

Read more about the Stanford study.

This is just one aspect of the complex issue of agriculture’s effect on climate change, which is a subset of the much larger set of environmental issues. The study raises an important point but doesn’t answer all the questions. We must find ways to produce more with less; more food, fiber, fuel with less land, water, inputs. But the report is important in illustrating the key role farmers and ranchers can play in addressing our environmental challenges.  In America, farmers and ranchers manage almost half the land and studies indicate that changes in agriculture practices, paired with the foresting of marginal agricultural lands, could offset up to 20% of current U.S. greenhouse gas emissions – on top of what agriculture has already done by becoming more efficient, according to the report.

The Stanford researchers also found what many other studies have confirmed:  that agriculture can be a cost effective solution to combating climate change.  As co-author Steven Davis states:

“When we look at the costs of the research and development that went into these improvements, we find that funding agricultural research ranks among the cheapest ways to prevent greenhouse gas emissions.”

Couple this with the findings of several recent studies that show farmers and ranchers have more to gain than lose from clean energy legislation and you understand why American Farmland Trust and our partners are focused on helping craft legislation that explicitly rewards farmers for taking steps to reduce carbon.  According to head Stanford researcher Lauren Burney:

“The striking thing is that all of these climate benefits were not the explicit intention of historical investments in agriculture. This was simply a side benefit of efforts to feed the world.  If climate policy intentionally rewarded these kinds of efforts, that could make an even bigger difference. The question going forward is how climate policy might be designed to achieve that.”

This report also helps underscore that recognizing all the benefits of the agricultural landscape is a great place to begin bringing everyone to the table as we seek to address the daunting challenges our world is facing in the form of a growing population and a changing climate.

About the Author: Jon Scholl is President of American Farmland Trust. Prior to AFT, he served as Counselor to the Administrator for Agriculture Policy at the United States Environmental Protection Agency. Jon and his family operate a corn and soybean farm in McLean County, Illinois.