Agriculture’s Role in the Climate Crisis: Emissions, Impacts, and Solutions
Agriculture and Greenhouse Gas Emissions: An Overview
Agriculture is a major driver of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions globally, contributing roughly 10–12% of total emissions directly, and significantly more when land-use change, deforestation, and food transport are included. These emissions come from multiple sources: methane from livestock digestion, nitrous oxide from fertilized soils, and carbon dioxide from machinery, deforestation, and energy use. When considering the full supply chain—from seed to supermarket—agriculture is responsible for as much as a third of global GHG emissions. Understanding this sector’s climate footprint is essential for crafting effective solutions.
Methane: The Livestock Emission Challenge
Methane (CH₄) is a potent greenhouse gas, with more than 80 times the warming power of carbon dioxide over a 20-year period. In agriculture, the largest source of methane comes from enteric fermentation, a digestive process in ruminant animals like cows and sheep. This means that beef and dairy production are among the most emission-intensive food sources. Reducing these emissions doesn’t mean eliminating livestock, but it does mean adopting smarter grazing practices, dietary supplements for livestock, and diversified protein sources. Public awareness campaigns around methane emissions are key to driving both policy and consumer change.
Fertilizers and Nitrous Oxide: An Invisible Force
Another key agricultural emission source is nitrous oxide (N₂O), which is nearly 300 times more potent than CO₂ over a 100-year period. It’s largely released through the use of nitrogen-based fertilizers, especially when they are over-applied or poorly managed. These emissions are invisible but highly impactful, contributing to climate change and waterway pollution. Transitioning to precision agriculture, cover cropping, and regenerative practices that build soil health are all critical to reducing nitrous oxide emissions and promoting sustainable food systems.
Land Use, Deforestation, and Soil Carbon Loss
Much of agriculture’s climate impact stems from the land itself—what’s grown, where, and how. Deforestation to make way for cropland or pasture is a leading cause of carbon loss from ecosystems, especially in tropical regions. Additionally, tilling and monocropping can degrade soil and release long-stored carbon into the atmosphere. Protecting forests, investing in agroforestry, and reimagining land stewardship through Indigenous and community-led models are among the most effective strategies for mitigating these emissions at scale.
Toward Climate-Smart Agriculture
Climate-smart agriculture isn’t just a buzzword—it’s a blueprint for transforming a historically high-emission sector into a climate solution. This approach focuses on three pillars: sustainably increasing productivity, adapting and building resilience to climate change, and reducing or removing GHG emissions. Supporting farmers through technical training, policy incentives, and market access to sustainable products can shift the entire system. Ultimately, decarbonizing agriculture isn’t just a rural issue—it’s a global imperative that touches every plate, paycheck, and policy.
For a quick review of the twelve-step explanation of the climate change problem, visit: The Twelve-step Climate Consensus
Regenerative Agriculture: Farming as a Climate Solution
Regenerative agriculture goes beyond sustainability—it actively restores ecosystems and can serve as a net carbon sink. Practices like no-till farming, cover cropping, composting, and rotational grazing help sequester carbon in the soil, improve water retention, and boost biodiversity. These methods not only reduce emissions but can actually draw down atmospheric carbon, offering one of the few viable pathways for reversing parts of the climate crisis. By valuing soil as a living system and empowering farmers as stewards of climate resilience, regenerative agriculture represents a hopeful frontier in climate action. Investing in these approaches pays dividends: healthier soil, stronger communities, and a cooler planet.
Regenerative Organic Agriculture Robert Rodale, J.I. Rodale’s son, coined the term “regenerative organic” to distinguish a kind of farming that goes beyond sustainable. Regenerative organic agriculture not only maintains resources but improves them. With only about 60 years of topsoil remaining at current practices, nothing less will do.
What is Carbon Farming? Green America
What is Regenerative Agriculture? (September 12, 2020) Ray Seidler, Cultivate Oregon
Soil Carbon Restoration: Can Biology do the Job?
Regenerative Organic Certified Regenerative Organic Certified™ is a revolutionary new certification for food, textiles, and personal care ingredients. ROC™ farms and products meet the highest standards in the world for soil health, animal welfare, and farmworker fairness
Resources from: Mike Badzmierowski, Soil Health Specialist, Oregon Department of Agriculture SOCAN Presentation 4-26-2022
- Producing Verified Climate-Smart Agricultural Commodities and Market
Opportunities in Oregon (Proposal)
Sample Letter of Support for Proposal (Producing Verified Climate-Smart Agricultural Commodities and Market Opportunities in Oregon)
World’s largest meat company, JBS, increases emissions by 51% in five years despite 2040 net zero climate target, continues to greenwash its huge climate footprint (April 21, 2022) Institute for Agriculture & Trade Policy, by DeSmog
Your Questions About Food and Climate Change, Answered (April 15, 2022) New York Times by Julia Moskin et al. – An in-depth, hyperlinked article about all aspects of how your diet affects climate change and what you need to know about eating meat, diary, seafood and produce, and preventing food waste. (NYT has a limited number of freely accessed articles, after which you hit a paywall.)
Yes, plant-based meat is better for the planet: The environmental debate over meatless meat, explained. (Nov 18, 2021) Vox, by Matthew Hayek and Jan Dutkiewicz – In-depth investigative article covering all aspects of the argument for alternative meats.
Animal Agriculture Responsible for 57% of Greenhouse Gas Emissions From Food Production, Study Finds (Sep 15, 2021) EcoWatch by Brett Wilkins – Discusses results from Nature Food study showing Global food production accounts for more than a third of all greenhouse gas emissions, with meat and dairy responsible for twice as much planet-heating carbon pollution as plant-based foods.
Food systems account for more than one third of global greenhouse gas emissions (March 2021) Food and Agriculture Association of the United Nations
Climate-Friendly Food Is Easier Than We Think (March 27, 2021) Edwina Hughes, Richard Waite and Gerard Pozzi, World Resources Institute.
Beyond Meat uses climate change to market fake meat substitutes. Scientists are cautious (Sept 2019) CNBC – “Beyond and Impossible go somewhere towards reducing your carbon footprint, but saying it’s the most climate friendly thing to do — that’s a false promise,” said Marco Springmann, a senior environmental researcher at the University of Oxford.
Palm Oil Was Supposed to Help Save the Planet. Instead It Unleashed a Catastrophe. (Nov 2018) New York Times Magazine, by Abraham Lustgarten – A decade ago, the U.S. mandated the use of vegetable oil in biofuels, leading to industrial-scale deforestation — and a huge spike in carbon emissions. [This link is good, however, The New York Times limits monthly access if you don’t have an account.]
How to Feed 10 Billion by 2050 Without Destroying the Planet (Oct 2018) EcoWatch
Hot & Hungry: How climate change affects the nutrient content of our food ( Sept/Oct 2018) Mother Earth Living
Climate change will make hundreds of millions more people nutrient deficient. (August 2018) Nicola Davis, The Guardian.
Climate Change Could Lead to Major Crop Failures in World’s Biggest Corn Regions (June 11, 2018) Georgina Gustin, Inside Climate News
Eating Seafood Can Reduce Your Carbon Footprint, But Some Fish Are Better Than Others (Feb 2018) Ecowatch by Oceana
SOCAN Archive
What is Regenerative Agriculture? Written by Dr. Ray Seidler
Why should we care about a relationship between climate change and agricultural practices? We all need food, right? Today, global warming already impacts significant agricultural and forestry issues. Plants, including crops and forests, are being found at new latitudes, animal life cycles highly dependent upon temperature are changing, insect pests including those that cause human and crop diseases are migrating to northern latitudes, water is growing scarce, drought conditions are expanding throughout the world, and weather extremes are more common. Many of us realize that serious action to mitigate climate change can begin today by changing certain agricultural practices that enable carbon sequestration. Farmers and working landowners have the opportunity to assist with the solution to these problems.
I was disturbed to learn that in the last 60 years the atmospheric CO2 increased from 320 parts per million (ppm) to 415ppm . Climate scientists stated that 400ppm was a clear redline into a danger zone of climate change. Humans did not previously exist the last time the atmosphere contained a similar amount of carbon dioxide!
In 1997, 192 nations came together in Japan and agreed to the Kyoto Protocol, a promise to decrease greenhouse gas (ghg) emissions. That year, global energy-related CO2 emissions stood at around 24 billion metric tons. In 2018, it was about 36 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide (a greenhouse gas). With this 50% increase over 21 years, attempts at reducing global CO2 emissions have obviously not been successful largely because of diverse economic, and political issues. In 2019, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) stated “to achieve world goals for climate while maintaining economic growth, ‘negative emissions technologies’ (NETs) that remove and sequester carbon dioxide from the change. Storing the carbon dioxide from NETs has the same impact on the atmosphere and climate as simultaneously preventing an equal amount of carbon dioxide from being emitted. Regenerative agriculture is a NET that works, and more people need to know how to implement these practices. This suggestion from the prestigious NAS verifies the viable, accessible, and validated practices of carbon sequestration achieved through regenerative strategies in hundreds of studies throughout the world. For sure we do not yet know everything about what impacts the amounts, and rate of buildup of soil organic carbon with all crops in all the thousands of soil types, under all weather conditions, but scientists on most continents are working on it.
We know enough now to get fully started in sequestering carbon. Here is what I know. If just 20 percent of Oregon’s 16 million acres of farm/ranching lands would begin practicing regenerative agriculture, the carbon sequestered will be sufficient to cancel out the entire state’s agricultural emissions even using calculations with the lower recorded carbon sequestration rates for croplands. NETs are being emphasized these days to help mitigate climate change because we are in a climate emergency situation!
Many farmers, ranchers, vintners, orchardists, and others may have a crop to sell and not even know what it is. It’s soil carbon taken from the atmosphere (explained more in our second article of In the News.) And, many city folks don’t realize the difference between soil (with soil organic matter or “SOM”) and dirt (without SOM) let alone the significance of this difference. It’s like the difference between life and death. Let’s change this void of information. We have work to do!
The essence of regenerative agriculture is to improve soil health by increasing the amount of SOM. Where does this SOM come from and why does it sometimes stick around and accumulate in the soil? Scientists around the globe are researching this topic and some of the amazing results will soon be shared in this space. Regenerative agriculture consists of scalable practices that can be carried out on a potted plant in our backyards, or on working land crops and forests (farms, ranches, vineyards, orchards, grasslands) that remove gaseous carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere through photosynthesis and convert that CO2 into healthy plants. The accumulation of plant residues and the associated soil food web organisms improve the biological, physical, and chemical characteristics of soil health, increase soil water holding capacity (better moisture maintenance), and improve soil fertility and stability from erosion processes. This soil organic matter accumulates over time as more carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere during subsequent growing seasons. Everyone can help do their part to mitigate climate change regardless of their scale of activity. The significant biological processes begin whenever invisible water vapor plus invisible atmospheric carbon dioxide combine through the processes of photosynthesis producing visible plants, trees, and shrubs, leaves, branches, roots, and invisible oxygen to breathe.
Soil carbon can also be increased by the addition of leaves, through the addition of kitchen vegetable scraps, wood chips, or by growing cover crops, adding livestock manure, compost, and recycling vegetable-based undesirable/spoiled crop leftovers, and more. Working lands also benefit from increased soil organic matter because of numerous biological, physical, and chemical changes that improve soil health properties. Organic matter in soil along with maintaining a green plant-soil cover reduces substantial topsoil loss from erosion. Biodiversity, or plant variety, is also a key component of a regenerative agriculture practice. Biodiversity is useful in attracting a variety of beneficial insects – both pollinators and predators – and also provide an increased variety of critical soil food web species and nutrients within the soil. Biodiversity of plants and insects makes for healthy soil and healthy crops and increases the ability of soil to sequester carbon. Variety is a good thing, both above and below the soil surface. Below you will find a brief discussion on this topic of biodiversity in a scientific study published a few months ago. See, number 1 in “Recently In The News”, below.
While growing, plant roots excrete microbial “candy”- substances that stimulate the attraction and growth of largely beneficial soil microbes that are in intimate contact with roots. When plants and roots die, they undergo decomposition as do some other soil life forms. Under optimal soil, biological, and physical management conditions (regenerative agriculture) some decaying plant residues return to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. The remaining plant residues in the soil may be stored as long term components representing what we call sequestered carbon. This material regenerates and makes the soil “healthy” because soil organic matter (SOM) is the nutritional force that supports a robust living soil community and nurtures the next crop. The large family of plant residues (like humic compounds) persists from years to decades in the soil. The material represents the sequestered carbon (i.e., soil organic matter). These healthy partially decomposed plant residues feed the entire soil food web complement of organisms directly or indirectly. Organic matter is not the only important material in the SOM. It also has a diversity of micronutrients complexed with it including magnesium, manganese, iron, aluminum potassium, and other minerals including nitrogen-containing compounds.
Thank you for reading! Stay tuned for our second part of “In the News.” Be sure to sign up for our symposium updates and register for our virtual symposium, Enabling Regenerative Agriculture: Getting Paid For Improving Soil Health on November 10th, and 17th. We look forward to your attendance at our symposium where you will hear other experts discuss the nexus between regenerative agriculture, climate mitigation, and soil resilience.