Carbon footprint for agriculture at 'basic' level

China has managed to feed one-fifth of the world's population with a relatively low amount of greenhouse gas emissions, and its agricultural carbon footprint was at a "basic and survival" level, a report said.

Food production produced about 9.5 percent of the country's gross domestic product in 2014, according to the 2023 China Agriculture and Rural Village Low-Carbon Development Report. The year 2014 was the last time the Chinese government published a greenhouse gas emissions inventory as required by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

However, the equivalent of 825 million metric tons of carbon dioxide that was generated in the sector account for just 6.7 percent of China's total emissions, said the report published by the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences.

"The agricultural sector has created about one-10th of China's GDP with one-16th of its carbon emissions, which is at the basic and survival level," it said.

The report was released on March 31 at the China Agricultural and Rural Low-Carbon Development Forum held by the CAAS.

While addressing the forum, Mei Xurong, a vice-president of CAAS, said those are the basic emissions that "can be further reduced, but cannot be eliminated."

The report said China's per capita carbon footprint in agriculture was slightly less than 1 metric ton of carbon dioxide equivalent, compared with more than 170 tons in the United States.

Mei said China produces 19.7 percent of the world's grain and 51.2 percent of its pork, with just 13.6 percent of global agricultural carbon emissions.

"China has provided its own solutions to zero hunger, poverty reduction and agricultural response to climate change," he said.

However, he noted that there's still room for progress.

The major sources of China's agricultural emissions are nitrous oxide from fertilizers, methane from rice farming and animal gut fermentation, which account for 30 percent, 23 percent and 25 percent, respectively.

"The percentage is higher than the global average and that in developed countries in Europe and the US," he said.

The report said that the effort by Chinese authorities to construct high-standard farmland — which is rolled out to advance large-scale mechanical farming and bolster agricultural resilience against extreme weather — in recent years has helped reduce the consumption of irrigation water and global warming gas emissions.

Despite the continuous rise in grain output in China, the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by every kilogram of food dropped from 1.5 kilograms in 2004 to 1 kg in 2019, it added.

While speaking at the low-carbon agricultural forum, Yan Dongquan, director of the Rural Energy and Environment Agency of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, noted that China's agricultural emissions are closely related to the cultivation of major crops such as rice, corn and wheat, and the breeding of pigs, cattle and sheep, whose demand will continue to grow in the coming years.

He said that technological breakthroughs are the linchpin to help further curb such emissions, and called for efforts to ensure such cutting-edge technologies can be eventually applied in the grainfields.

"The effort to reduce emissions in the agriculture sector will not compromise national food security or sacrifice farmers' income," Yan said.

lilei@chinadaily.com.cn