{"id":11506,"date":"2023-10-29T22:42:02","date_gmt":"2023-10-29T21:42:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.agriculturelore.com\/?p=11506"},"modified":"2023-10-29T22:42:02","modified_gmt":"2023-10-29T21:42:02","slug":"how-much-is-agriculture-responsible-for-climate-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.agriculturelore.com\/how-much-is-agriculture-responsible-for-climate-change\/","title":{"rendered":"How Much Is Agriculture Responsible For Climate Change"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Agriculture is an essential industry for global food security, not to mention supporting millions of jobs worldwide. It is also a major contributor to greenhouse gases due to the intensive land use, fertilizer production and cattle farming systems employed. Estimates vary depending on the source, but globally agriculture is responsible for between 15-20 percent of total global carbon dioxide emissions. This is significant, considering agriculture plays such an important role in people’s lives.<\/p>\n

Agricultural practices involve large amounts of inputs, such as fuel and fertilizers, both of which ultimately break down into gases like carbon dioxide. These chemicals are released into the atmosphere, and contribute to the overall global warming trend. Other sources of greenhouse gases from agricultural production include burning of biomass in agricultural land, rice fields, methane from cows and nitrous oxide from fertilizer. All of these activities lead to increased levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which in turn exerts additional warming effect on the environment.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, agricultural production also has a direct impact on the climate through the conversion of natural habitats for planting and grazing, resulting in large areas of disturbed ecosystems. This reduces the amount of carbon stored in land areas, and leads to increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, further contributing to global warming.<\/p>\n

Agricultural practices also contribute to climate change in other subtle ways. For example, intensive land use for growing crops has resulted in weakened biodiversity and has contributed to global desertification and depletion of soil fertility. This in turn contributes to decreased food security and potential famine, as agricultural production becomes harder to sustain. In fact, it has been estimated that global land use change is responsible for 11–15 % of all global greenhouse gas emissions.<\/p>\n