Climate change mitigation for Australian wheat production

Abstract

Climate change threatens humanity yet the provision of food that supports humanity is a major source of greenhouse gases, which exacerbates that threatening process. Developing strategies to reduce the emissions associated with key global commodities is essential to mitigate the impacts of climate change. To date, however, there have been no studies that have estimated the potential to reduce GHG emissions associated with the production of wheat, a key global commodity, at a national scale through changes to wheat production systems. Here, we assess the consequences for net GHG emissions of Australian wheat production from applying three changes to wheat production systems: increasing the rates of fertiliser N to achieve the water-limited yield potential; increasing the frequency of lime applications on acid soils; and changing a two year cropping rotation (from wheat-wheat to legume-wheat). We predict that applying these three changes across the key wheat growing regions in Australia would increase production of wheat and legumes by 17.8 and 5.3 Mt, respectively, over the two-year period. Intensifying Australian production would reduce the need to produce wheat and legumes elsewhere in the world. This would free up agricultural land at the global scale and avoid the need to convert forestland and grassland to cropping lands to meet increasing global demands for wheat. We find that applying these changes across wheat growing zones would reduce the GHGs associated with Australian wheat production by 18.4 Mt CO₂-e over the two-year period. Our research supports the notion that intensification of existing agricultural production can provide climate change mitigation. The impacts of intensification on other environmental indicators also need to be considered by policy makers.

Keywords: Burden shifting; Indirect land use change; Intensification.