Climate change exacerbates the environmental impacts of agriculture
Creators
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Yang, Yi
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Tilman, David
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Jin, Zhenong
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Smith, Pete
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Barrett, Christopher B.
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Zhu, Yong-Guan
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Burney, Jennifer
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D'Odorico, Paolo
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Fantke, Peter
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Fargione, Joe
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Finlay, Jacques C.
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Rulli, Maria Cristina
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Sloat, Lindsey
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Jan van Groenigen, Kees
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West, Paul C.
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Ziska, Lewis
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Michalak, Anna M.
- the Clim-Ag Team
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Lobell, David B.
- Clark, Michael
- Colquhoun, Jed
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Garg, Teevrat
- Garrett, Karen A.
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Geels, Camilla
- Hernandez, Rebecca R.
- Herrero, Mario
- Hutchison, William D.
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Jain, Meha
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Jungers, Jacob M.
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Liu, Beibei
- Mueller, Nathaniel D.
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Ortiz-Bobea, Ariel
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Schewe, Jacob
- Song, Jie
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Verheyen, Julie
- Vitousek, Peter
- Wada, Yoshihide
- Xia, Longlong
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Zhang, Xin
- Zhuang, Minghao
Abstract
Agriculture's global environmental impacts are widely expected to continue expanding, driven by population and economic growth and dietary changes. This Review highlights climate change as an additional amplifier of agriculture's environmental impacts, by reducing agricultural productivity, reducing the efficacy of agrochemicals, increasing soil erosion, accelerating the growth and expanding the range of crop diseases and pests, and increasing land clearing. We identify multiple pathways through which climate change intensifies agricultural greenhouse gas emissions, creating a potentially powerful climate change–reinforcing feedback loop. The challenges raised by climate change underscore the urgent need to transition to sustainable, climate-resilient agricultural systems. 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.
Copyright and License
© 2024 the authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original US government works. https://www.sciencemag.org/about/science-licenses-journal-article-reuse
Acknowledgement
Funding
This research was partly supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (52370193) and the US National Science Foundation (DEB-1831944).
Contributions
Y.Y. conceptualized the study; Y.Y., D.T., Z.J., C.B.B., D.B.L., P.S., Y-G.Z., J.B., P.D., P.F., J.F., J.C.F., M.C.R., L.S., K.J.G., P.C.W., L.Z., and A.M.M. led the writing effort; and the group authors reviewed and edited the manuscript. All authors made substantial contributions to discussions of the content of the manuscript.
Conflict of Interest
J.B. is a board member of Aspen Global Change Institute (unpaid); served as an adviser and completed a scoping project for FAIRR on net zero food systems in 2023 (paid, completed); and served a term as science adviser to the DNC Environment and Climate Crisis Committee (ended 2023; unpaid). D.B.L. completed a working paper on mitigation opportunities in agriculture for the Asia Development Bank (ended 2022; paid). All authors declare that they have no competing interests.
Additional details
Identifiers
- PMID
- 39236181
Funding
- National Natural Science Foundation of China
- 52370193
- National Science Foundation
- DEB-1831944
Dates
- Submitted
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2023-12-07
- Accepted
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2024-08-02
Caltech Custom Metadata
- Caltech groups
- Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences (GPS)
- Publication Status
- Published