The Climate Crisis and Agriculture

February 2022
Citation:
52
ELR 10096
Issue
2
Author
Peter H. Lehner and Nathan A. Rosenberg

Agricultureā€™s contribution to climate change is much more substantial than official figures suggest. We will not be able to achieve our overall mitigation goals unless agricultural emissions sharply decline. Farms and ranches can be a major part of the climate solution, while protecting biodiversity, strengthening rural communities, and improving the lives of the workers who cultivate our crops and rear our animals. Agriculture climate solutions are critical elements both in ensuring our food security and in limiting climate change. This Article, excerpted from Farming for Our Future: The Science, Law, and Policy of Climate-Neutral Agriculture (ELI Press 2021), provides the current state of emissions in the agriculture sector, and argues that we must transform agriculture from one of the world's largest emitters of greenhouse gases into a net sink.

Peter H. Lehner is Managing Attorney of the Sustainable Food & Farming Program at Earthjustice. Nathan A. Rosenberg is a visiting scholar at the Food Law and Policy Clinic at Harvard Law School and an attorney consulting for Earthjustice.

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