Managing for climate and production goals on crop-lands
The assumption that crop-land natural climate solutions (NCS) have benefits for both climate change mitigation and crop production remains largely untested. Here we model GHG emissions and crop yields from crop-land NCS through the end of the century. We find that favourable (win-win) outcomes were the exception not the norm; grass cover crops with no tillage lead to cumulative global GHG mitigation of 32.6 Pg CO<sub>2</sub> equivalent, 95% confidence interval (29.5, 35.7), by 2050 but reduce cumulative crop yields by 4.8 Pg, 95% confidence interval (4.0, 5.7). Legume cover crops with no tillage result in favourable outcomes through 2050 but increase GHG emissions for some regions by 2100. Crop-lands with low soil nitrogen and high clay are more likely to have favourable outcomes. Avoiding crop losses, we find modest GHG mitigation benefits from crop-land NCS, 4.4 Pg CO<sub>2</sub> equivalent, 95% confidence interval (4.2, 4.6) by 2050, indicating crop-land soil will constitute a fraction of food system decarbonization.
Authors
- Dominic Woolf (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9344-9496)
- Jonathan Sanderman (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3215-1706)
- Johannes Lehmann (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4701-2936)
- Stephen A. Wood (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9551-8165)
- Shelby C. McClelland (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1827-3029)
- Matthew Hayek (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9792-4362)
- Stephen M. Ogle (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1899-7446)
- Déborah Bossio (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2296-9125)
- Yi Yang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5548-8811)
- Doria R. Gordon (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6398-2345)
Institutions
- The Nature Conservancy (US)
- Environmental Defense Fund (US)
- Woodwell Climate Research Center (US)
- Cornell University (US)
- Yale University (US)
- University of Florida (US)
- Institute for Advanced Study (DE)
- New York University (US)
- Colorado State University (US)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Nature Climate Change
- Published
- 2025-05-19
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-025-02337-7
- Citations
- 11
- Primary Topic
- Climate change impacts on agriculture
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 33.30
Funders
- National Science Foundation
- U.S. Department of Energy
- U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
- Arcadia Fund
- Nature Conservancy
- Environmental Defense Fund
- National Institute of Food and Agriculture
- Office of Science
- U.S. Forest Service
- David R. Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future , Cornell University
- Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability, Cornell University
- Pacific Northwest National Laboratory