Reducing Methane Emissions in the Global Food System
Reducing Methane Emissions in the Global Food System
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Agriculture & food systems under the microscope
The 2022 UN climate change negotiations in Egypt (COP 27) saw food and agriculture take center-stage, product of a growing awareness of its role as both a driver, and victim of, global warming. Side events and pavilions hammered home the message that food systems matter.
The previous year, COP-26 in Scotland was the springboard for the Global Methane Pledge, in which nations agreed to work together to cut methane emissions 30% by 2030. As of this writing, more than 150 nations have signed the pledge, which applies to all anthropogenic methane emissions sources—including agriculture and the food system. COP-28, in Dubai at the end of 2023, is expected to focus on this theme and to feature a roadmap for reducing food and agriculture emissions so that climate change can be limited to 1.5°C warming.
A new study released this month illuminates how the near-term targets for reducing methane emissions from the agriculture and food system can be achieved. It highlights the crucial nature of public and private investment to accelerate innovation and then make sure the innovations and best practices are put into practice.
The Global Innovation Needs Assessment
ClimateWorks Foundation and the Global Methane Hub have collaborated on a Global Innovation Needs Assessment (GINA) report—“Food Systems Methane Innovations”—that provides new data and projections on how the food and agriculture sectors can slash methane emissions to limit climate change while continuing to feed the world.
The report takes a system-wide perspective, modeling the impact of innovations across the global economy. Its analysis described here quantifies the economic benefits of specific methane-related innovations and identifies the investment levels –from research and development to commercialization—needed to unlock these benefits. As the study points out, reducing methane can have many additional benefits beyond emissions reductions, including reduced air pollution, greater land conservation, and water preservation.
The problem of methane
Methane (CH4) is one of the most powerful greenhouse gases—86 times more potent than Carbon Dioxide over a 20-year time period. In 2022, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimated that past methane emissions from human activity account for almost a third of global warming so far.
Methane emissions have doubled over the past century and are currently spiking even higher: 2021 and 2022 saw the largest increases in methane emissions ever recorded—both over 15%.
More than 150 countries, representing 70% of the global economy, have signed onto the Global Methane Pledge—committing to a 30% decrease in methane emissions by 2030.
Methane in the food & agricultural system
The food system accounts for 60% of global anthropogenic methane emissions and most of those emissions come from three sources: livestock farming, food loss and waste and rice cultivation.
Cutting methane emissions comes with a host of perks
The innovations that will drive methane emissions reductions also provide numerous social and environmental benefits.
Cost savings in achieving 1.5 °C
Investing and deploying all of the innovations in this report to reduce methane emissions across the livestock, rice production, and food loss and waste subsectors (as described in the report), could reduce the costs of achieving a 1.5°C climate objective by as much as US$1 trillion in 2050.
Improved air quality
Methane emissions increase concentrations of ground-level ozone; ozone exposure is estimated to cause one million premature deaths annually from respiratory and cardiac illness. A recent UN study found that for every megaton of methane emissions reduced, approximately 1,430 premature deaths are avoided every year—along with many more emergency department visits and hospitalizations. Food system methane innovations could avoid approximately 1.3 million premature deaths over the period to 2050.
In addition, the reduction in methane emissions and accompanying ground-level ozone avoids crop losses in wheat, soybeans, and rice production. And, many of the food system innovations can also reduce ammonia emissions, reducing associated water and air pollution impacts.
Water conservation
Currently, agriculture accounts for 70% of all freshwater withdrawals. A number of innovations discussed in this report—including more effective water management in rice cultivation, reducing food loss and waste, and shifting diets towards alternative proteins, could help reduce the sector’s water footprint.
Land conservation
Efforts to reduce methane emissions could potentially free up more than 350 million hectares of land globally by 2050, which could be used for increased carbon sequestration and habitat protection. Shifting diets to alternative proteins in some parts of the world could reduce the amount of agricultural land needed by 322 million hectares; the biggest potential land savings are in Brazil and the United States. Reducing food waste could reduce the land used for crops by 33.8 million hectares by 2050.
Employment
Investing and deploying all selected innovations to reduce methane emissions across the livestock, rice production, and food loss and waste subsectors (as described in the report), could create more than 120 million jobs globally by 2050.
Food security
The methane-reducing innovations in the food and agricultural sector could improve food security through increased productivity and reduced food waste, and diet shifts could increase land available for food production in places (while recognizing that ruminant livestock in many parts of the world rely on land unsuitable for crop production).
Innovations that reduce food and agriculture methane emissions bring a wealth of benefits
A variety of established and emerging options exist for reducing methane emissions in the global food system. The GINA study adopted a holistic approach in prioritizing food system innovation, focusing on technologies and practices that offer greatest near-term mitigating potential; are representative of opportunities across the entire food system value chain; and/or are most likely to scale up successfully as well as yield positive co-benefits and avoid adverse impacts.
The choice of the areas of focus does not imply certainty over the role of these innovations in the future nor preclude developments in other innovation areas. Rather the chosen innovations highlight the potential scale of benefits of innovating in the food system.
The GINAs report projects how each of the different categories for innovations could cut methane emissions and offset costs for cutting carbon emissions. These benefits reach US$100 billion by 2030 and rapidly increase to US$1 trillion by 2050. In contrast, the costs of developing and implementing these innovations starts out more intensely and evens out as the benefits continue to increase.
* Net benefits US dollar (millions/yr) amount baseline equivalent value in 2005
Investment must increase rapidly
Innovation does not grow on trees. Generating the new technologies and techniques needed to slash methane emissions in the food and agriculture sector requires a level of spending in proportion to the importance of this goal.
*All US dollar amounts are based on 2005 equivalent value
The current level of investment is inadequate. Reducing methane emissions and limiting climate change with this study’s selected innovations is estimated to total roughly $608 billion between now and 2035, and $1.54 trillion by 2050, implying a need for an average increase in annual spending of $55 billion per year by 2035 and $80 billion per year by mid-century.
Investing in dissemination, RD&D and commercializing food system methane innovations could bring up twelve times larger benefits by 2050 through reducing the costs of the energy and land transition.
In comparison, total annual investments in targeted food system methane measures and alternative proteins are in the range of an estimated $10-$20 billion, falling well short of the major ramp-up needed to fully unlock the sector’s diverse benefits:
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- An estimated $4.3 billion in investment in targeted methane abatement activities in the agriculture and land use sector according to a recent report by the Climate Policy Initiative
- $2.5 billion commitment from the World Bank to finance projects aligned with climate smart agriculture.
- The Global Methane Pledge launched investment platforms in late 2022, coordinating over $900 million of dedicated funds; funding largely comes from national and multilateral organizations
- The alternative proteins sector has seen growing investment over recent years, totaling $3.2 billion in 2021
- In food loss and waste, investments largely do not target major methane abatement opportunities although there are promising large-scale investments in cold chain expansion/coordination (e.g. ARCH’s $66 million investment in cold chain expansion in East Africa, and India’s systems-approach to cold chain coordination through the NCCD
Overall investment in the wider agricultural sector also remains low. Estimated government spending between 2013 and 2018 averaged $540 billion but with the bulk of funding flowing towards price incentives and subsidies. General sector services including agricultural extension or advisory services, which plays a critical role in boosting productivity and sustainable growth, averaged around $100 billion annually of total spend.
In contrast annual investment in energy transition technologies, including renewable energy, transport and heat electrification, energy storage and other technologies totaled $1 trillion in 2022.
Both private and public sector funding will be crucial to deploying innovations. The private sector is likely to continue to play a critical role in RD&D and commercialization (e.g. for biotech and agritech investments supporting food system methane innovation).
Increased public investment in agriculture extension and technology transfer, programs that provide new technologies and innovations to farmers and food producers throughout the supply chain, is also critical to the overall goal. Total investment in this critical category needs to increase by an additional $51 billion in 2025 to $224 billion by 2035 to unlock benefits of the food system innovation measures.
Innovations drive methane emissions reductions
The global food and agriculture sector is diverse and accounts for a small share of global economy but plays a critical role in the lives of billions. This GINAs study identified a number of innovations in the sector that can reduce methane emissions, and then calculated the effectiveness of each innovation along with the level of investment needed—all of which can be seen in the charts below.
Net economic benefits:
The system benefits of innovation refer to the total savings and revenue generated in limiting climate change to 1.5°C warming, achieved with innovations that reduce food system emissions—as opposed to relying solely on the energy system to reduce emissions. System benefits are calculated as the difference in total system costs between a 1.5°C energy system-driven scenario and a 1.5°C food system-augmented scenario. This includes revenues generated from practices and technologies that save money (such as improvements in productivity) compared to taking no action. Parameters include:
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- Total system costs: all capital, operating and fuel costs within the global energy system.
- 1.5°C energy system-driven scenario: where a 1.5°C climate ambition is met using emissions reduction in the energy system, without relying on interventions to reduce emissions in the food system.
- 1.5°C food system-augmented scenario: where innovative food system interventions mitigate (and avoid) GHG emissions (particularly methane), reducing the abatement required from the energy system and, thus, total system costs.
Investment needs:
This category includes the development of new techniques and processes to improve agriculture operations, such precision planting or shallow flooding of rice fields.
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- Agriculture extension/technology transfer spending includes the promotion of best practices, scientific and technology research, and practical information through advisory services and training (e.g. to farmers), demonstrations and pilots.
- R&D and commercialization spending facilitates conceptualization, prototyping, and demonstration of novel technologies under scalable, real-world conditions. Many of the innovations modelled by this study are nascent and will likely require significant investment to unlock their potential economic and environmental benefits.
Potential for methane abatement varies by region
Methane abatement potential varies by region and innovation type. These regional differences can be seen in the following map, where each color represents a different region. Mitigation potential is estimated based on production emissions, but looking through that lens alone masks per capita consumption basis food system methane emissions.4
Productivity
Improvements in management practices boost yields and efficiencies, thereby reducing methane emissions per unit of food produced. Many of these are best practices that leverage existing technologies and can be deployed with little cost—or even provide cost savings—but face barriers to deployment due to lack of awareness/incentives.
Maturity: established
Techniques to increase animal production and feed efficiencies, and decrease the feed energy and nutrients used by the immune system in response to disease.
Maturity: established
Animal breeding practices that emphasize the natural animal variations in methane emissions. As the focus of this practice would be low- and middle-income countries, traditional breeding practices would be emphasized over gene editing.
It’s globally relevant, and in the short term more relevant to more developed livestock production systems with well established genetic improvement programs.
Maturity: established
Techniques that include optimizing the time that livestock are slaughtered, limiting methane produced over each animal’s lifetime, and using supplementary feeding and grazing management techniques to increase yields.
Maturity: established
Draining rice paddy fields several times instead of leaving them submerged, and using alternative wetting and drying techniques.
Maturity: established
Incorporating techniques that use and process rice straw—the stalk of the plant left after harvesting—instead of burning.
Maturity: established
Sowing rice seed directly into a dry field, where it sprouts, rather than transplanting from nurseries, which saves water and avoids the flooding conditions that generate methane.
Maturity: established
Reducing food loss across the supply chain through better transit and routing innovations; pallet level temperature monitoring devices; hyperspectral imaging to detect items that are spoiling; cold storage units; and off-grid solar refrigeration.
Maturity: emerging
Constant monitoring of food stocks and surpluses using sensors and transport route optimization.
Direct mitigation
Technologies that directly reduce methane emissions.
Maturity: emerging
A number of feed additives are commercially available with the potential to reduce methane emissions significantly. Additional feed additives are being developed, like ones from red seaweeds (macroalgae) that inhibit the production of methane.
Maturity: emerging
This process would stimulate the ruminant´s immune system to produce antibodies against methanogens. Antibodies are delivered to the rumen (the first of two stomachs) via saliva. The technique has utility in extensive grazing production systems with little or no feed supplementation and limited potential for intensification.
Maturity: established
Planting low methane emitting rice varieties reduces field methane emissions while maintaining yields.
Maturity: established
Application of fertilizers with higher amounts of ammonium phosphate sulfate fertilizer inhibits methane emissions as the sulfate-reducing microorganisms outcompete methanogen.
Maturity: established
Aerobic decomposition of waste prevents methane emissions, and centralized compost management—through government programs—improves efficiencies.
Maturity: established
Processing waste by combining a sorting facility with biological treatment, such as composting or anaerobic digestion. The facilities must be able to manage fluctuations in waste’s organic content.
Diet shift
Adjusting diets away from ruminant meat (such as beef) and dairy products to include more alternative proteins. This includes a shift towards conventional plant-based proteins, fish, and non-ruminant livestock (such as pigs and chickens) as well as towards newly emerging alternative protein products.
Maturity: established & emerging
Shifting diets away from ruminant products like meat and dairy and towards plant-based and alternative proteins, especially appropriate for high-income countries where protein intake is usually more than adequate. This could reduce the reliance on animal agriculture, which is responsible for a large share of land-use greenhouse gas emissions and plays a disproportionate role in water withdrawals and environmental pollution.
Shifting diets away from ruminant products like meat and dairy and towards plant-based and alternative proteins, especially appropriate for high-income countries where protein intake is usually more than adequate. This could reduce the reliance on animal agriculture, which is responsible for a large share of land-use greenhouse gas emissions and plays a disproportionate role in water withdrawals and environmental pollution.
Policymakers have the tools to take action now
Countries differ in their ability to capitalize on the GINA study findings for policy. While the benefits of food system innovations would be widely distributed, existing capacity and access to upfront capital are not. The barriers to adoption also differ around the planet. To encourage rapid uptake of the GINA study findings, we have translated the assessments into general policy recommendations. The GINAs food system methane’s advisory committee, which consists of seven experts from philanthropy, academia, and government, co-authored the policy recommendations.
Advisory Committee
Avery Cohn
Avery Cohn is a director of Food and Agriculture Program at ClimateWorks as well as the Healthy Diets/Healthy Planet workstream of the Climate and Land Use Alliance, a grantmaking strategy promoting a future for protein consistent with climate and development goals. Avery joined ClimateWorks in 2019, following over 15 years of research and policy work on a food system compatible with a livable climate. During that period, Avery served as a professor at Tufts University, where he retains an affiliation, advised international organizations, and held additional roles at Stanford, Brown, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis. Avery holds a B.S. from the University of California Davis, a master’s from the Yale School of Forestry, and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.
Carlos Gonzalez Fischer
Carlos M. Gonzalez Fischer is a research associate at the Department of Global Development at Cornell University. Carlos’ work aims to improve the sustainability of agri-food systems. Recently, his research has focused on the livestock sector, healthy and sustainable diets, and the climate impact of food.
Before joining Cornell, Carlos was a Postdoctoral Scientist at the New Zealand Agricultural Greenhouse Research Centre, where his research looked at livestock farming in a world that limits global warming within the goals of the Paris Agreement, while balancing selected economic, nutritional, food security, social, health, cultural and other environmental outcomes. He has previously served as a technical consultant to the National UN-REDD Programme in Argentina (working on the National Action Plan on Forests and Climate Change and the country’s long-term, low-carbon development strategy for the AFOLU sector), as a Scientific Officer with Compassion in World Farming (a UK-based global NGO), as an independent consultant on sustainable food production and consumption (working for clients such as UN-FAO and the University of Oxford), and as a Postdoctoral Researcher with the Buenos Aires Institute of Ecology, Genetics, and Evolution (hosted by the University of Buenos Aires and the National Research Council in Argentina).
Catherine Witherspoon
Catherine has been advising ClimateWorks on the links between air quality management, short-lived climate pollutants and general climate mitigation since 2008. Previously, she amassed 26 years of increasingly responsible experience in air pollution control at the state, regional and federal level. Initially a student assistant at the California Air Resources Board, she eventually rose to the Executive Officer post. Along the way, she managed a staff of 1,100 and an annual budget of $350 million, and helped draft both the California Clean Air Act and California’s Greenhouse Gas Solutions Act. During breaks from state service, Catherine was an Expert Consultant to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (Region 9), served as Legislative Director for the South Coast Air Quality Management District, and consulted for alternative fuel providers. Ms. Witherspoon has a BA in Politics from the University of California at Santa Cruz.
Hayden Montgomery
Hayden has been Special Representative of the Global Research Alliance on Agricultural Greenhouse Gases since 2016, representing its 65 member countries in all international forums and facilitating mitigation research between its members and partner organizations. From 2013 to 2016 he was New Zealand’s Ambassador to Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay. Prior to these appointments Hayden gained considerable experience within the United Nations climate change process, representing New Zealand in agriculture, land use and forestry negotiations between 2006 and 2012. During this time (2010-2012) he was also based in the New Zealand Embassy in Paris where he represented New Zealand in other relevant processes and organizations including the OECD, UNEP and FAO, and spear-headed New Zealand’s international research cooperation on agricultural greenhouse gases. In addition to his international experience Hayden was involved in the development of New Zealand’s domestic agricultural climate change policy. Hayden is based in Montevideo, Uruguay.
Laura Birx
Laura Birx is the Senior Director of Global Climate Strategies at Climate Leadership Initiative. She has worked at the intersection of food systems, agriculture, public health, nutrition, and climate change for two decades, mainly in the geopolitical South. She worked for 8 years at the US Agency for International Development to help build the Feed the Future Initiative. After USAID, she joined the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Agriculture team, where as the Deputy Director for Strategy, Planning, and Management, she led a new climate adaptation strategy and a series of investments. Most recently, she served as the Director of Planning at ClimateWorks Foundation. She has her Master’s in Public Health from George Washington University.
Le Hoang Anh
Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) of Vietnam
Ms. Le Hoang Anh is Senior Officer and Climate Change Focal Point for the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) of Vietnam, and she has been serving as a key negotiator of the Climate Change Negotiation Taskforce of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) at COP 26 and other COPs. She was one of the lead authors of the IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Land, 2018. Chapter 6 – Interlinkages between desertification, land degradation, sustainable land management, food security, and greenhouse gas fluxes in terrestrial ecosystems (2019). She was responsible for the formulation of MARD’s action plan of the Paris Agreement and NDCs commitment.
She holds a Master of Science in Hydroinformatics from the International Institute for Infrastructure Hydraulic and Environmental Engineering (IHE, Institute for Water Education), Delft, The Netherlands, and a Bachelor of Hydrologic Engineering from Water Resources University in Hanoi, Vietnam.
Marcia DeLonge
Marcia DeLonge is the Program Director at High Tide Foundation, a foundation that invests in climate change solutions across numerous sectors, including energy, food, agriculture, waste, and technology. Marcia’s background includes two decades of research, leadership, and collaboration in the climate, environmental, and agricultural sciences. Prior to joining High Tide in 2022, Marcia was the Research Director and Senior Scientist in the Food & Environment program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a member-supported non-profit organization. Previously, she was a Postdoctoral Scholar at University of California, Berkeley, where she contributed to research on opportunities to manage grazed grasslands for climate change adaptation and mitigation. Her previous work included scientific research on storms in Senegal and dry tropical forests in Mexico. She received her MS and PhD in Environmental Science from the University of Virginia and her BA from Northwestern University.
Metric definitions
1Quantity of methane abated
Methane emissions savings from each food system innovation have been calculated using the global warming potential (GWP) of methane over a 20-year period, matching the report timeline as well as the period when methane emissions have a higher GWP.
2Net economic benefits
The system benefits of innovation refer to the total savings and revenue generated in limiting climate change to 1.5°C warming, achieved with innovations that reduce food system emissions—as opposed to relying solely on the energy system to reduce emissions. System benefits are calculated as the difference in total system costs between a 1.5°C energy system-driven scenario and a 1.5°C food system-augmented scenario. This includes revenues generated from practices and technologies that save money (such as improvements in productivity) compared to taking no action. Parameters include:
- Total system costs: all capital, operating and fuel costs within the global energy system.
- 1.5°C energy system-driven scenario: where a 1.5°C climate ambition is met using emissions reduction in the energy system, without relying on interventions to reduce emissions in the food system.
- 1.5°C food system-augmented scenario: where innovative food system interventions mitigate (and avoid) GHG emissions (particularly methane), reducing the abatement required from the energy system and, thus, total system costs.
(2005 dollars are used in the chart to control for inflation)
3Global cumulative investment
This chart tracks the total investment needed to develop and implement each innovation at a scale that will contribute to limiting climate change to 1.5°C warming. (2005 dollars are used in the chart to control for inflation)
4Production versus consumption-based food system emissions and abatement opportunities:
This study estimates mitigation potential based on each country’s production emissions in accordance with UNFCC guidelines for reporting GHG emissions from food systems. Considering the global nature of agricultural trade and that food consumption in many high-income countries far exceeds what is environmentally sustainable, the study also considers food system emissions by country on a per capita consumption basis as reported in Springmann et al (2020) and a related EAT-Lancet study (which focuses on per capita emissions in 2010). This approach allows for a more accurate comparison of the mitigation efforts depicted in the GINAs with each country’s per capita emissions from food systems.
- Among the G20 economies, North America, Europe, and Oceania show high per capita food-related, consumption-based GHG emissions, whereas Asia’s per capita emissions are considerably lower.
- Outside the G20, Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia also have low per capita food-related GHG emissions.
The ratio between total methane mitigated per capita in the GINAs innovation scenario (which includes both the mitigation necessary to achieve a 1.5°C target and additional mitigation from investment in innovation) and the consumption-side methane emissions per capita from 2010 serves as a rudimentary benchmark for comparing mitigation activities with historical contributions to emissions from food system methane.
- The analysis finds the highest mitigation-to-emissions ratios in middle-income countries like Brazil and China by 2030. By 2050, the highest ratios are expected to shift to lower-income countries in Africa and Southeast Asia.
- This comparison are crucial reference points for future policy analysis. Subsequent research and analysis can examine various aspects of mitigation, such as pollution control, dietary changes, and productivity improvements, as well as the sources of investment in food systems innovation and the beneficiaries of sector-wide mitigation.