Emissions Footprints of Agriculture Around the World 1970–2020: Decreasing Land Conversion, Regional Exceptions and Increasing Management Intensity

Land-use change (LUC) and agricultural management associated with crop production are responsible for 13% of global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. However, the quantification of such land use emissions for specific crops remains incomplete due to the exclusion of important emission sources and limited geographic or crop coverage in previous studies. In this paper, we derive global spatially explicit land use emissions from LUC and agricultural management over the period of 1970 to 2020 and attribute them to 16 agricultural crop types and pastureland for livestock production, using the IMAGE-Land and LPJmL 4.0 models. Our results show 210 GtCO₂-eq were emitted over these 50 years; 69% of which were from LUC and 31% from agricultural management. To analyze trade-offs between emissions and productivity, we generate emissions footprints (tCO₂-eq/ha) and emission intensities (tCO₂-eq/ton) per crop. Here, we define three clusters of crop-region pairings that help prioritize measures for future reduction in land use emissions from agricultural crops: (i) high-footprint, efficient land use (e.g., palm oil in Indonesia) where limiting conversion of high-carbon stock area has first priority, (ii) low-emission, inefficient land use (e.g., tropical cereals in Western Africa) where the focus should be on improved agricultural management to increase yields and thereby also minimize the need for land expansion, and (iii) moderate-footprint and moderately efficient land use (e.g., soybeans in Brazil and rice in Southeast Asia) where a combination of agricultural management improvements and restricting land conversion can help most.