Will agriculture be America’s leading source of greenhouse gas emissions? | Environmental Working Group

Agriculture could produce up to 38 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2050.

Here’s why: Every other sector of the economy, especially transportation and energy, is expected to reduce emissions dramatically. But emissions from agriculture will likely hold steady.

Agriculture is responsible for at least 10 percent of annual U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. When combined with emissions from fertilizer production, the sector’s share is even higher.

If these emissions remain steady while emissions from other sectors fall, agriculture’s share of U.S. emissions will grow, according to climate models.

Under current U.S. policies, emissions from transportation and electricity should fall substantially by 2050 while emissions from agriculture hold steady. In that scenario, agriculture’s share of U.S. emissions could nearly double from existing levels, topping 18 percent.

But if emissions from other sectors fall in line with aggressive U.S. international commitments, agriculture’s share could hit 38 percent by mid-century.

Figure 1: U.S. emissions by economic sector in 2022 and predicted emissions in 2050 under two scenarios.

Source: EWG, using data from Energy Innovation, Rhodium Group and the Environmental Protection Agency.

Figure 2. If the U.S. follows its international commitments, agriculture could approach 40 percent of emissions by mid-century.

Scientists warn if emissions from agriculture don’t go down, the worst impacts of the climate crisis will be inescapable.

Farmers’ adoption of well-known practices that reduce greenhouse gas emissions could significantly reduce emissions from agriculture, according to a report from the Boston Consulting Group and the Walton Family Foundation.

Simply changing practices used to produce the nation’s food could slash greenhouse gas emissions from farming by almost 22 percent, according to the report.

The report also considered changes in how fertilizer is used in addition to reforms in tillage practices and grazing management, the use of cover crops, feed additives and soil amendments, and the targeted use of trees.

When combined with dietary changes that lower meat consumption and food waste, emissions from food could fall by 57 percent, the report says. That’s about 368 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, or MMT CO2e, or more than Argentina’s total annual emissions.

Figure 3: Scenarios for reducing agriculture’s emissions by 2050.\

Source: Walton Family Foundation and Boston Consulting Group.

Before the Inflation Reduction Act became law, the Agriculture Department’s Environmental Quality Incentives Program, or EQIP, sent $5.4 billion to farmers between 2017 and 2022. Less than one-third of EQIP funds went to “climate-smart” practices that reduce emissions or sequester carbon in the soil.

Figure 4: EQIP payments totaled $5 billion between 2017 and 2022, but most did not go to climate-smart practices.

Source: EWG, from public records requests for the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service program data.

EWG has also found that most land in the Department of Agriculture’s Conservation Reserve Program is returned to farming after just 10 years, releasing carbon that has built up in the soil during the previous decade.

Since enactment of the Inflation Reduction Act, more funding is now going to conservation practices that reduce farming’s greenhouse gas emissions. This is thanks to legislative guardrails that require the $19.5 billion provided by Congress to support climate-smart conservation practices. But some members of Congress are seeking to eliminate these well-known and popular practices, putting them at risk.

The 2022 data used for this analysis is sourced from the EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Inventory.

The current policy scenario draws data from the Rhodium Group’s Taking Stock 2024 report and uses regression to project greenhouse gas emissions to 2050.

The scenario in which the U.S. meets its international commitments draws data from Energy Policy Simulator 4.0.2, a non-partisan, open source and peer-reviewed model created by Energy Innovation.

Within this model, EWG assessed the U.S. “NDC default scenario,” which aligns with international commitments. EWG merged two sectors, District Heat & Hydrogen and Water & Waste, into the Buildings sector to synchronize with the Rhodium and EPA sectoral boundaries, and excluded the Land Use and Geoengineering sectors.

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