Earth Day gives farmers and ranchers a chance to celebrate their conservation efforts that are helping reduce emissions. Shelby Myers, American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) economist, said data from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) shows agriculture consistently accounts for just 10% of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.
“The other thing that we have is the ability for us to sequester greenhouse gas emissions, and our land use, land use change and forestry sector represents about negative 12.7%, which means pulling those emissions out of the air,” Myers said. “And it increased year over year by 4% from 2019 to 2020. And so, when you combine our ability to sequester greenhouse gases with staying just 10%, we’re actually at negative 2% overall.”
Myers noted conservation efforts by farmers and ranchers are reducing emissions. They are at the forefront of climate-smart farming, putting scientific solutions, technology and innovation to work to protect the land, air and water.
“Agriculture continues to make great strides in its ability to implement voluntary conservation practices, and we’ve seen these be very successful over the last couple of years, and in particular, it’s led to a year over year reduction in agricultural emissions from 2019 to 2020 by at least 4.3%,” she said.
There’s plenty of things for farmers and ranchers to celebrate, Myers said.
“Our ability to do more with less is certainly something to be celebrated. Since 1990, per capita emissions for agriculture has decreased 20%,” she said. “That means we’re feeding more people and we’re producing at a high efficiency, but also doing it in ways that are conserving resources and taking care of our land and natural resources, so ag continues to show itself as a strong partner in reducing greenhouse gases.”
Not only is agriculture’s overall emissions low, farmers and ranchers are taking active steps to make their footprint even smaller, AFBF noted.
Watch this video to hear from Texas farmer Zack Yanta on using cover crops to improve his soil.