Can Farms Produce to the Max and Still Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions?

Jun 20, 2022

By Kristen Mally Dean

Decarbonizing agriculture is critical for the U.S. to reach net zero emissions by 2050. A new data-driven approach looks at practices that are good for the earth and profitable for farmers.

The world relies on American farmers to do much more than set its tables. In addition to producing food for people and animals, American farmers produce feedstocks for biofuel production.

In the process of doing this, the agricultural industry contributes about 10% of U.S. greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Because the amount of land dedicated for agriculture is limited, farmers need to find more ways to operate efficiently, sustainably and profitably while also reducing GHG emissions. With new practices, farmers can make farms a net sink of CO₂, helping the U.S. reach its goal of achieving net zero emissions by 2050.

Sustainable intensification is a two-prong approach many think could help. It tries to optimize land use and management practices for maximum farmland productivity at the same time it tries to minimize associated environmental impact. The trick is finding the right balance between the two objectives.

Scientists who specialize in agroecosystems modeling and life-cycle analysis (LCA) from Colorado State University (CSU) and the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory took a new analytic approach to the issue in a recent study of corn and soy farming in Iowa. They co-authored an article, "A multi-product landscape life-cycle assessment approach for evaluating local climate mitigation potential," in the June 20 issue of the Journal of Cleaner Production.

"The concept of sustainable intensification of farming was applied into more broadscale landscape application," said one of the article's co-authors, Hoyoung Kwon, a principal environmental scientist in Argonne's Energy Systems and Infrastructure Analysis (ESIA) division. "We considered productivity and GHG emissions, attempted to optimize land management tactics and products, and investigated different trade-offs that improve the land and land productivity."

For example, farmers can clear and repurpose corn crop residue (or "stover") for biofuel, but a percentage of stover can remain in the soil for valuable nutrient and carbon sources for future crops. Farmers can plant cover crops during the winter (or "fallow") season, to supplement removed stover. The authors took into account energy, which has an emissions cost of planting of cover crops to holistically address net benefits of stover removal and cover crop planting. Farmers can also reduce how much land they till after a growing season ends, which lessens decay and reduces the amount of CO₂ that emanates from the soil. However, the farmer has to till some of the land to be ready for the next growing season.

While some farmers already follow one or even all three of these practices, the scientists from Argonne believe a better understanding of their impact will motivate more to do so, for real benefit.

"Our approach gives a holistic perspective and looks at the perspective of the farmer: What are all the products that can be produced on the land and what are the sustainability benefits?" said co-author Troy Hawkins, group leader of fuels and products in Argonne's ESIA division. "Farming can be a risky, low-margin exercise. Profitability will always be a primary focus. However, sustainability has value that may be unrecognized. How can we put all that together with changes to land management practices to make farming more sustainable and improve farmers' costs?"

The scientists looked at the trade-offs and synergies between sustainable intensification and carbon-sequestering conservation measures in a real-world scenario. They used two models—DayCent and the Greenhouse Gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy Use in Technologies (GREET) LCA—to evaluate a farming area upstream of Des Moines, Iowa.

The DayCent model represents daily flows of carbon, nitrogen and water between the atmosphere, vegetation and soil in natural and agricultural ecosystems. The scientists relied on it to evaluate GHG emissions in corn ethanol production and the effects of residue harvest.

They used GREET to account for emissions associated with farm operations and the use of harvested corn grain, soybean and corn stover as feedstocks for biofuel production. GREET is widely used across industries to evaluate energy consumption, GHG emissions, air pollutant emissions and water consumption associated with biofuel supply chains and other transport and energy technologies. Fellow co-author Michael Wang, Argonne's interim division director for energy systems and Infrastructure, is a primary architect of GREET.

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Video: The 15-Year Bet Behind Every New Variety!

Canada is trying to decide how much agricultural research capacity it can afford to lose. Brian Rossnagel believes the better question is whether the country can afford to rebuild it.

The longtime barley and oat breeder makes the case with a simple fact about his profession: the consequences of today’s decisions may not become visible for 10 or 15 years.

“Pick the right parents. That’s the biggest thing,” Rossnagel says. “If you pick the wrong parents, you’re not going to get anywhere—and you don’t know that until 10 years, 15 years later.”

That warning carries particular weight as Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada moves to reduce spending and streamline parts of its science operations. The department’s 2026–27 plan anticipates the loss of approximately 665 positions by 2028–29 and says some research will be reduced where capacity exists in academia or industry. AAFC says the changes will make its science operations more cost-effective over the long term.

For Canada’s seed industry, Rossnagel’s career illustrates what is at stake.

This fall, the retired University of Saskatchewan breeder will be inducted into the Canadian Agricultural Hall of Fame. During his 35-year career at the Crop Development Centre, he helped develop more than 100 barley and oat varieties, including CDC Austenson—one of Western Canada’s most widely grown feed barleys. His induction recognizes not only those varieties, but the collaboration and research system that made them possible.

Rossnagel is quick to emphasize that none of it was the work of one person.

“The first thing I thought about was all the other people who contributed to whatever success I and my program had over the years,” he says. “We know that it’s not an individual who does this. It’s a group—a team.”

That team extends well beyond the breeder whose name appears beside a variety. It includes technicians, pathologists, quality specialists, statisticians, regional testing sites, seed growers and industry partners. It also includes the breeders who came before and those who will carry the germplasm forward.

CDC Fraser barley, for example, moved through three breeding careers. Its parents came from Brian Harvey’s program. Rossnagel advanced the material after Harvey retired, and Aaron Beattie later guided it through registration and release.

That kind of handoff is normal in plant breeding. The person who makes the original cross may never see the resulting variety reach farmers.

It also explains why lost research capacity cannot simply be switched back on when budgets improve.

“If you shut it off, it’s very, very difficult—and particularly costly—to start it up again,” Rossnagel says. “If you have to start from scratch, it’s going to be at least 10 years before anybody notices whether you’re getting anything done or not.”

The concern is not simply how many experimental lines Canada can process. Modern equipment, statistical tools and genetic technologies allow today’s breeding programs to evaluate tens of thousands of lines—far more than Rossnagel could handle when he entered the field in the early 1970s.

But efficiency and automation do not generate every idea.

“If you pare back down, and instead of having six or seven individual scientists concentrating on wheat breeding, you go down and say three people could handle all this, well, that’s half the ideas gone,” he says. “Particularly if you happen to lose the three people who had the really neat and innovative ideas, boy, that’s a problem.”

It is a timely distinction for Canadian agriculture. Consolidating programs may preserve the volume of material moving through a system, at least initially. It may not preserve the diversity of thinking, regional knowledge or willingness to pursue unconventional crosses.

That regional knowledge matters because Canadian agriculture is not one uniform production environment. A variety suited to southern Alberta may face different disease, moisture and maturity pressures than one grown in Manitoba, Ontario or Atlantic Canada.

“Agriculture is applied biology,” Rossnagel says. “Biology, all around the Earth, moves from the poles to the equator. It does not move from Newfoundland to B.C. like politics do.”