Earth Day: Reflecting On The (Major) Role Of Science In Agriculture
This post was originally published on GMO Answers' Medium Page.
Each year on April 22 we celebrate Earth Day, and have the chance to pause and reflect on the health, safety and future of our planet. As we think about the importance of environmental protection and its impact on our lives, science plays an important role to help support and address solutions to environmental challenges. In honor of this year’s 47th annual Earth Day, GMO Answers reached out to Janet Carpenter, an agricultural economist, for her insights into some of today’s agricultural technologies helping to address these major issues, like climate change.
Earth Day this year is drawing much deserved attention to the importance of supporting science at all levels to protect our health, safety and economy. Nothing symbolizes the link between our health and the health of the Earth more than agriculture, which both contributes to and is affected by climate change. Technological advances in agriculture, including genetically modified crops, have already alleviated agriculture’s contribution to climate change and will continue to play a role in the adaptation necessary to address global food security under changing climatic conditions.
Agriculture’s contribution to climate change
Agricultural production practices are recognized as significant contributors to overall greenhouse gas emissions. In crop production vehicle emissions from farm equipment operations, such as tillage, planting, harvesting, and pesticide and fertilizer application, contribute carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Tillage practices increase greenhouse gas emissions by releasing carbon from the soil. The use of synthetic fertilizer also contributes through its energy intensive production, as well as the volatilization of nitrous oxide from fields.
Thankfully, current commercialized GM herbicide tolerant and insect resistant crops have reduced farm vehicle emissions by facilitating the adoption of conservation tillage practices and reducing insecticide use and, therefore, trips made across the fields to apply insecticides and herbicides. An uptick in the adoption of conservation tillage has increased carbon sequestration in soils. Even more, the anticipated commercialization of nitrogen use efficiency traits will decrease the need for applied nitrogen fertilizer while maintaining yields.
The impact of climate change on agriculture
Climate change poses unprecedented challenges to production agriculture due to the critical dependence of agriculture on favorable climate conditions. Impacts stem from the direct effects of changes in temperature or precipitation on crop development, as well as indirect effects of changes in the severity of pest pressure, availability of pollination services and performance of other ecosystem services that affect agricultural productivity. The overall effects of climate change will depend on adaptation at multiple levels including production, consumption, education, research, services and governance. Research and development of new crop varieties with enhanced stress resistance can increase the resilience of our agricultural systems under climate change.
Advances in agricultural technology, including GM crops with stress tolerance, will have an important role in reducing risks related to climate variability and change. Nitrogen use efficiency, conservation tillage, drought tolerance and heat tolerance were among the most promising agricultural technologies evaluated for their impact on forecasted yields and hunger under climate change. Already, drought tolerant corn is available, which minimizes yield losses under drought conditions. Other stress tolerant traits, such as salinity tolerance and flood tolerance, are also under development. GM crop traits that are already available have unrealized potential in countries where they are not currently grown.
Scientific advances are necessary to better understand and predict the effects of climate change on agriculture as well as to develop the best technologies to adapt and meet the challenge of feeding a growing global population.
