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Tuesday, April 30, 2024

Carbon Emissions from Agriculture

 An important new painstakingly done research has shown that the emissions from nitrogenous fertilisers is 5% of the total. One third of this is in production and two thirds after application as bacteria act on these fertilisers and release nitrous oxide which has two hundred times more global warming potential than carbon dioxide. These emissions are more than that of shipping and aviation combined.

However, the paper suggests only technical solutions like lesser use of fossil fuels in the production of fertilisers and more efficient use on farms to try and mitigate these emissions which will not achieve much.
The best way to eliminate the use of N fertilisers is to prepare compost and biocultures in situ on farms themselves. However, this is a very labour intensive and time xonsuming process as the equivalent of one bag of N fertilisers is one tractor trolley of compost prepared from mixing and aerating agri and forest biomass with animal dung over four months. Therefore, unless government subsidies are switched from chemical to organic farming to compensate farmers for this extra labour, there is little likelihood of a transition away from N fertilisers.
https://lnkd.in/dgiZenAC

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