Trade-offs in the food-climate nexus: Agricultural intensification, renewable energy, and the temporal asymmetry between food production and GHG emissions in Bangladesh

Agricultural intensification in developing economies creates a fundamental tension between food security and climate sustainability. Existing research has largely examined pesticides, fertilizer, and renewable energy separately, providing limited insight into how these inputs jointly shape the food-climate nexus. This study addresses that gap by investigating the long-run and short-run effects of pesticide use, fertilizer consumption, and renewable energy adoption on food production and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in Bangladesh over 1990–2023. Drawing on the Environmental Kuznets Curve and Water-Energy-Food nexus frameworks, the study employs an Autoregressive Distributed Lag model with Error Correction Mechanism (ARDL-ECM), supplemented by Fully Modified OLS and Canonical Cointegrating Regression robustness tests. The results reveal a pronounced trade-off. In the long run, pesticide use, renewable energy, and fertilizer consumption each increase food production, with fertilizer exerting the largest elasticity, followed by renewable energy and pesticides. However, pesticide use and fertilizer consumption simultaneously increase GHG emissions, whereas renewable energy reduces them significantly. Short-run dynamics differ markedly from long-run relationships: renewable energy and fertilizer exert negative short-run effects on food production, while renewable energy temporarily increases emissions before delivering long-run mitigation benefits. A theoretically important finding is that GHG emissions adjust to equilibrium almost twice as fast as food production. This temporal asymmetry implies that the environmental costs of agricultural intensification materialize substantially earlier than its productivity gains. The study therefore demonstrates that renewable energy is the only input capable of simultaneously advancing food security and environmental sustainability in Bangladesh. These findings provide a dynamic and policy-relevant basis for climate-smart agricultural strategies and sequenced policy design in developing agrarian economies.