Food systems offer huge opportunities to cut emissions, study finds

[Jim__]

From phys.org

A new global analysis of greenhouse-gas emissions from food systems says that such emissions have been systematically underestimated—and points to major opportunities to cut them. The authors estimate that activities connected to food production and consumption produced the equivalent of 16 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2018—one third of the human-produced total, and an 8 percent increase since 1990. A companion policy paper highlights the need to integrate research with efforts to reduce emissions. The papers, developed jointly by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, NASA, New York University and experts at Columbia University, are part of a special issue of Environmental Research Letters on sustainable food systems.

The lead author of the analysis, Francesco Tubiello, heads the environment statistics unit at FAO. He said the study shows that food production represents a "larger greenhouse-gas mitigation opportunity than previously estimated, and one that cannot be ignored in efforts to achieve the Paris Agreement goals." He said emissions inventories that countries currently report to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change poorly characterize food systems, and underestimate their contribution to climate change.

The study provides country-level datasets that are being refined ahead of the UN's Food Systems Summit, to be held in July. It considers emissions linked not just to production of livestock and crops, but from land-use changes at the boundary between farms and natural ecosystems, and from related manufacturing, processing, storage, transport and waste disposal.

The companion policy piece calls for better scientific understanding of the processes through which greenhouse gases are emitted from all phases of food production and consumption. It says that the food system has a major role to play in mitigating climate change. The lead author of that paper, Cynthia Rosenzweig of Columbia University's Earth Institute and the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said, "Science and policy domains have often been siloed in academia. We propose a 'double helix' of interactive research by scientists and policy experts that can deliver significant benefits for both climate change and the food system."

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