CSU study: Great Plains greenhouse gas emissions from ag could be eliminated

FORT COLLINS — A new report from the Natural Resource Ecology Lab at Colorado State University suggests that widespread adoption of practices such as no-tillage cultivation in the Great Plains could completely eliminate greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture in the region.

The article appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and uses historical data and ecosystem models to estimate the magnitude of annual greenhouse gas emissions from all agricultural sources in the Great Plains from 1870 to 2000.

CSU senior research scientist William Parton was the article’s lead author, while Myron Gutmann, director of the Institute of Behavioral Science at the University of Colorado, was the principal investigator.

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Parton said that carbon released during plow-out of native grasslands was the largest source of such emissions prior to 1930, while livestock production, energy for tractors and the use of fertilizers are the largest sources today.

But the use of no-tillage agriculture, slow-release fertilizer and other best management practices could mitigate the emissions without any reduction in food production.

“If just 25 percent of agricultural producers in the region adopted these practices, we estimate a 34 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions,” Parton said in a statement from CSU. “If 75 percent of them adopted the practices, greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture in the region could be completely eliminated.”

There are of course barriers to such adoption, including higher costs for slow-release fertilizers and new equipment in addition to the training required for no-tillage agriculture.