Phys.org September 9, 2024
Agriculture’s global environmental impacts are widely expected to continue expanding, driven by population and economic growth and dietary changes. In their review an international team of researchers (USA – University of Minnesota, Cornell University, UC San Diego, UC Berkeley, The Nature Conservancy, MN, World Resources Institute, Columbia University, Stanford, Scotland, Denmark, Italy, UK) highlighted climate change as an additional amplifier of agriculture’s environmental impacts, by reducing agricultural productivity and efficiency of agrochemicals, increasing soil erosion, accelerating the growth and expanding the range of crop diseases and pests, and increasing land clearing. They identified multiple pathways through which climate change intensified agricultural greenhouse gas emissions, and created a climate change–reinforced feedback loop. According to the researchers this requires investments that both accelerate adoption of proven solutions that provide multiple benefits, and that discover and scale new beneficial processes and food products… read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLEÂ
The major environmental impacts of agricultural systems and potentially exacerbating effects of climate change. Credit: Science, 6 Sep 2024, Vol 385, Issue 6713