Argonne researchers quantify how to reduce emissions by farms changing their practices and adopting novel technologies.
Argonne researchers quantify how to reduce emissions by farms changing their practices and adopting novel technologies.
Currently, the agriculture sector contributes significantly to the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the United States, accounting for nine percent of the nation’s overall GHG emissions. The practices that grain farmers use to produce their crops — managing fertility, tillage practice and crop rotations — influence the overall carbon footprint of U.S. agriculture. By using sustainable practices, farmers could substantially reduce their carbon footprint and become a vital partner to the biofuel industry in its efforts to produce the lowest carbon fuels possible.
“This work is unique since we provide a complete quantification of carbon intensity (CI) for the cradle-to-farm-gate activities by conducting scenario-based analysis for selected farming practices that uses regionalized life cycle inventory data and a spatially explicit soil organic carbon modeling tool.” — Xinyu Liu, postdoctoral appointee
A recent study by researchers in the Energy Systems division at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Argonne National Laboratory quantified how much farms might reduce emissions by changing their practices and adopting novel technologies. Xinyu Liu, a postdoctoral appointee, wrote about the pivotal research in Environmental Research Letters, published on July 20. She collaborated with Hoyoung Kwon, principal environmental scientist, and Michael Wang, manager of systems assessments, all of Argonne; and Daniel Northrup, a former contractor to DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), now with Benson Hill, a crop improvement company in St. Louis.
Read more at DOE/Argonne National Laboratory
Photo Credit: GregMontani via Pixabay
