Agriculture

One place these greenhouse gas emissions come from is the soil. When organic matter decomposes, it breaks down into carbon in the soil. Having carbon in the soil helps the plants grow well and this lessens the need for fertilizer. Large-scale tilling is a common practice on many farms today. When farms till the soil, stored carbon (50-70% of all CO₂ in the world)  gets released into the atmosphere, adding to the climate crisis. Even the USDA has recognized tilling as a problem:, “Though conventional tillage warms cool spring soils and manages weeds, it also increases soil erosion and nutrient runoff, which can impact crops, water, and air quality. … Conventional tillage releases greenhouse gasses stored in the soil and uses more fuel to plow fields.” Not only does this increase the CO₂ in the atmosphere, but agriculture is the  number one driver of deforestation. This means that there are fewer trees to absorb the CO₂ released.

Another problematic agriculture practice is mono-crops. This is when a farm only grows one crop on its land year after year. Because all plants have certain nutrients they take and add to the soil, when only one type of plant is grown in the same spot, the soil becomes unbalanced. This causes the need to add synthetic fertilizers, which tend to get into local waterways and pollute them.  Manufacturing these fertilizers releases methane, a potent greenhouse gas.  Another issue with mono-crops is that if one plant gets a pest or disease, it will spread to all the other plants. This can cause farmers to lose the whole yield. To avoid this, many farmers use pesticides, but these not only kill the pest but also the helpful microbes in the soil and the whole ecosystem around these farms. Many animals, insects, and native plants are suffering. If farmers had a diversity of crops, it would only hurt part of the farmer's yield.