Food and Global Climate Change

Human-caused global climate change is our most important environmental problem. To help formulate policies to address this crisis, climate scientists are trying to better understand what sorts of human activities cause the production and release of climate-warming greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide and methane, into the air.

In 2021, two studies by international research teams provided evidence that food production is a very large source of emissions, resulting in one-third of the overall total. The researchers identified several major categories of emission sources. The first and largest source globally has to do with agriculture and changes in land