Agriculture has become a carbon-intensive endeavour. Crop, livestock and fossil fuel use in agriculture account for about 25 per cent of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
At the same time, more than 800 million people around the world are hungry and two billion are overweight or obese. About 30 per cent of food is lost or wasted, and yet we need 70 per cent more food to feed 10 billion people by 2050.
If we produce more food, in the same ways we have been, GHGs from agriculture will only rise. To introduce further complexity, the agriculture sector must reduce 20 to 30 per cent of its emissions to meet the Paris Agreement’s goal of keeping the average increase in global temperature 2°C below the pre-industrial levels.
Read more at University of Guelph