Food emissions alone could threaten climate goals

The fight against global climate change has usually centred around cutting down on energy emissions to keep emissions in check and stave off a potentially calamitous rise in global temperatures. However, control over food emissions—the greenhouse gases produced in the production of food—usually take a backseat in plans to beat global warming.

Multiple studies have shown that food emissions could account for about a third of global emissions. This means that cutting down on energy consumption and related pollution would solve a large part of the global climate conundrum but any meaningful lowering of emissions must also grapple with the issue of food emissions.

The sources of food emission include rampant deforestation, changes in land use patterns, emissions from fertilisers and manure, methane from cattle rearing and rice production, food processing emissions, refrigeration and transport.

The carbon budget

Countries have internationally agreed to make efforts to keep global warming below 2°C, and even try to maintain it below 1.5°C under the Paris Agreement, which comes with a “carbon budget”—the maximum amount of carbon or carbon-equivalents that can be emitted into the atmosphere to stay within the cap.

However, in a business-as-usual scenario, emissions from agriculture could threaten to eat up most of that budget by the end of the century even if energy emissions were reduced to zero immediately, according to a paper published by Michael Clark and colleagues in the journal Science.

If things go on as they are, food emissions alone are guaranteed to go past the budget to keep global warming below 1.5°C by mid-century, the report said.

How to stay within the budget

The paper by Clarke and colleagues also shed some light on the measures that can be taken to slash carbon emissions and improve the chances of staying within the bounds of the Paris Agreement.

The researchers found that switching to a plant-rich diet and eating less meat and dairy could be the biggest factor in reducing global food emissions, effectively halving emissions single-handedly.

Other solutions to the food emission problem could be to improve farming practices, consume only as much food as the body requires to stay healthy, waste less food and increase crop yields to produce more food using the same resources.

If all these measures are even partially adopted, the world could cut food emissions by almost two-thirds and have a similar chance of staying below the 1.5°C target, while adopting all of these in totality would actually produce net negative food emissions, according to the report.

Indian agriculture footprint

India is the third-highest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world after the United States and China, out of which agriculture makes up 18 per cent, according to a 2017 study by Tek B Sapkota and others. Major crops like rice and pulses and livestock are the biggest generators of emissions.

While energy emissions clearly remain the more pressing issue, India’s large agriculture industry, which contributes a fifth of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP), has a chance of shaving off nearly 18 per cent of its greenhouse gas emissions, according to another study by Sapkota and colleagues, and most of it could help farmers save on costs.

Among other suggestions, the study makes the case that nearly half of the goal could be met by enforcing just three measures at no cost: efficient use of fertilisers, adoption of zero-tillage and management of water used in rice irrigation.

One researcher at London think-tank ODI recently estimated that India had already lost 3 per cent in GDP because temperatures had risen 1°C above pre-industrial levels as water levels rise and the low-income bracket suffers. The study suggests that this figure could rise to even 10 per cent if temperatures rise by 3°C.