Organic farming can reduce the climate impact of agriculture

The shift to organic farming as a way to reduce agriculture’s climate impact was highlighted in a Danish report, mainly due to increased carbon storage. Researchers also believe that the climate impact of organic farming has the potential to evolve.

In Danish a reportThe report on the impact of agriculture on climate, which is published annually, includes a number of measures to reduce climate impact. In addition to organic farming, it concerns, for example, improving the climate for fodder and fertilization. In the report, researchers at Aarhus University and the Danish Center for Food and Agriculture compared the climate footprint per hectare of organic and conventional farms with livestock production, crop farming and other production.

Organic farms have been shown to have a smaller climate footprint, primarily due to increased carbon storage in the soil. This is linked to the fact that organic farms often have a higher proportion of grass, which has a greater capacity to store carbon in the soil due to large amounts of crop residues, not least roots, remaining in the soil. Organic farms also don’t use synthetic fertilisers, which account for a large part of their climate footprint. Better crop rotation and lower animal density are other factors that lead to a lower climate impact.

For Denmark to achieve its goal of reducing agricultural emissions of greenhouse gases by 55% to 65% by 2030, emissions must be reduced by an additional 7.75 million tons of carbon dioxide. Researchers believe carbon dioxide reductions of 6.9 to 9.8 tons by 2030 are possible, but would require significant investment. According to the report, organic production is the only agricultural production regulated by the European Union that generally produces lower greenhouse gas emissions than conventional production.

Assessing the environmental impact of organic and conventional agriculture is not easy. In Sweden it has researcher We mentioned earlier that the climate impact is about the same for organic foods as it is for conventional foods, but it depends on which crops you look at or what feed the animals get. One a report From 2021 also shows that the outcome when assessing environmental impact often depends on the factors being compared, as well as on the shape of the surrounding landscape.