Pssst. Want to know the cheapest way to slow global warming? Invest in agricultural research.
Maybe that is not a revelation to you, but it sure seems to be a secret to a lot of outspoken folks who think we should go back to a simpler way of farming — like, with a team of mules.
Modern agriculture has become the whipping boy for all those self-appointed activists who want us to believe the world would be a far better place if we would just stop planting corn and eating beef. The theory goes that modern agriculture is a cancer on the environment because it requires fossil fuels to power equipment and pesticides and herbicides to control weeds and insects, increases soil erosion and pollutes the groundwater with chemicals and fertilizer. All of this activity, we’re told, adds to global warming and the eminent demise of our little planet.
Often overlooked by those self-anointed gurus of the green movement are the benefits modern agriculture provides to Mother Earth. That’s right, there are benefits. Turns out we all enjoy massive perks from the advancements in modern agriculture over the past 50 years, a message that Big Ag has been trying to promote recently.
But this week the chorus of support for modern agriculture was joined by a group of researchers led by two Stanford Earth scientists. Yep, that Stanford — the institution of higher learning that sits on top of the San Andreas fault near San Francisco.
A study by this team of Stanford scientists says that advances in high-yield agriculture during the latter part of the 20th century prevented massive amounts of greenhouse gases from entering the atmosphere — the equivalent of 590 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide. That’s prevented, not emitted.
How can this be, you ask? Well, apparently these folks at Stanford actually know how to work a scientific calculator, and they concluded that the yield improvements agriculture has seen over the past few decades have reduced the need to convert forests to farmland, a process that typically involves burning of trees and other plants, which generates carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. If not for these increased yields — and this is where the calculator comes in handy — the researchers estimate that additional greenhouse-gas emissions from clearing land for farming would have been equal to as much as one-third of the world’s total output of greenhouse gases since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution in 1850.
“Our results dispel the notion that modern intensive agriculture is inherently worse for the environment than a more ‘old-fashioned’ way of doing things,” says Jennifer Burney, lead author of a paper about the study that will be published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Burney is a postdoctoral researcher with the Program on Food Security and the Environment at Stanford who says agriculture currently accounts for 12 percent of human-caused greenhouse-gas emissions. She admits that greenhouse-gas emissions have increased with agricultural intensification, but those emissions are far outstripped by the emissions that would have been generated in converting additional forest land to farmland.
“Yield intensification has lessened the pressure to clear land and reduced emissions by up to 13 billion tons of carbon dioxide a year,” Burney says.
But wait — it gets better.
Steven Davis, a co-author of the paper and a postdoctoral researcher at the Carnegie Institution at Stanford, says, “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.”
The Stanford study suggests that without the emission reductions from yield improvements, the total amount of greenhouse gas sent into the atmosphere over the past 155 years would have been between 18 and 34 percent greater than it has been.
Additionally, the researchers calculated how much money was spent on research for each ton of avoided emissions by calculating the total amount of agricultural research funding related to yield improvements from 1961 through 2005. That produced a price of approximately $4 to $7.50 for each ton of carbon dioxide that was not emitted.
Wow! These folks have just confirmed what those of us in agriculture have been saying for years — that science and technology provide the efficiencies needed to feed a hungry world while minimizing the impact on our environment.
Thank you, Stanford researchers! Can you just do one more small favor for those of us in agriculture? Can you please take a copy of your study down the street to your colleague Michael Pollan at the University of California at Berkley? You know, the self-proclaimed expert on agriculture that has been telling the world we need to stop planting corn and eating beef. He’s an expert on agriculture because he’s a professor of…oh, yeah…journalism!
For more information, read “Greenhouse gas mitigation by agricultural Intensification,” published by the National Academy of Sciences.