An innovation pipeline to cut agricultural emissions could be combined with soil carbon sequestration to achieve net negative emissions in row crop agriculture, according to a Perspective. While significant effort has focused on maximizing soil carbon storage through farm management practices, technical innovations that reduce emissions have received relatively little attention. Daniel Northrup and colleagues describe a green transition roadmap for implementing a suite of emissions-reducing technologies across three stages. The first phase involves optimizing the efficiency of current technologies. For example, using digital agriculture to precisely apply nitrogen fertilizer, which is the largest contributor to row crop emissions, could lead to a 23% emissions reduction for the potent greenhouse gas nitrous oxide. The second phase, which could reduce emissions by 41% over the next 5 years, entails replacing current technology with near-mature low-emission alternatives. Examples include crop genetics to improve nitrogen use efficiency, electrical ammonia synthesis, microbial nitrogen synthesis, and electric farm equipment. The third phase, which could reduce emissions by 71% within 15 years, involves full system redesign of agricultural practices and inputs to use fewer chemicals and low-concentration fertilizers, and the deployment of small, automated, sensor-guided systems. According to the authors, wide-scale adoption of this emissions-reducing plan could allow agriculture to fulfill its critical societal functions while generating environmental benefits.
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Article #2020-22666: "Novel technologies for emission reduction complement conservation agriculture to achieve negative emissions from row-crop production," by Daniel L. Northrup, Bruno Basso, Michael Q. Wang, Cristine L.S. Morgan, and Philip N. Benfey.
MEDIA CONTACT: Daniel Northrup, Benson Hill, St. Louis, MO; tel: 267-975-7702; email: <dan@northrup.ag>
Journal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences