Agriculture and climate change:

Towards negative carbon emissions

through wizards and prophets

Benjamin Z. Houlton
Professor and Director
UC Davis John Muir Institute of the Environment
Member, University of California, Global Climate Leadership Council
www.bzhoulton.com; @BenHoulton; www.johnmuir.ucdavis.edu
Benjamin Z. Houlton, PhD
Professor and Chancellor’s Fellow
Global Environmental Studies
& Director, UC Davis John Muir
Institute of the Environment

Academic background:
-Chemistry (B.S.) (Wisconsin)
-Environmental engineering (M.S.)
(Syracuse)
-Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
(Ph.D.) (Princeton)
Don’t ever show this kind of image during a
talk, ever…
 Green Revolution
Fertilizers
Irrigation
Pesticides
Biotechnology

In 1970 Norman E. Borlaug was awarded the Nobel

Peace Prize for a lifetime of work to feed a hungry
world.
Tilman et al. 2004
IPCC, 2013
Major Sources, “the Big Three”
• Carbon dioxide from land use, energy and transportation

• Methane emissions from livestock, rice cultivation

• Nitrous oxide from nitrogen fertilizer applications

Paris Climate Agreement

Negative
emissions occurs
when greenhouse
gas “sinks” exceed
“sources”

Anderson and Peters, Science, 2016

Key challenge of the21st century:
Negative carbon emissions while
feeding people, and protecting
agriculture, economy, planet
‘The Wizard is saying, “Be smart, make more, and that
way everyone can win.” The Prophet is saying,
“Hunker down, conserve, obey the rules, otherwise
everyone is going to lose.”

-Charles Mann
Food system transformation
• Dietary shifts toward low carbon food, principally via reduced meat
and dairy
• Technological Innovation to improved agricultural efficiency –
fertilizer, resources, boosted crop photosynthesis, etc – and increased
carbon sinks in the soil, i.e. regenerative agriculture
 The Prophet says –
you are what you eat…
and so is the planet

https://www.youtube.com/watch?ti
me_continue=3&v=nUnJQWO4YJY
The Wizard says – we can have our cake (steak!)
and eat it too, we just need to innovate
Consider the story of nitrogen…

Haber and Bosch

The Haber-Bosch process, invented in the early 1900s,

allows for the industrial conversion of atmospheric N2
into nitrogen fertilizers, which feed more than 3 billion
people today.
Nitrogen: Behind the population bomb

Erisman et al., Nature Geoscience, 2008

So what about negative carbon emissions?
Negative emissions occurs when greenhouse gas “sinks” exceed
“sources”
Technologies examined
• Hydrogen power connected to renewables for fertilizer production
• No-till land and ocean agriculture
• Coated fertilizers, precision cropping systems
• Dairy digesters – collection of natural gas
• Micro-algae production, seaweed, alternative feeds for livestock
• Agro-forestry
• Regenerative agriculture – soil restoration via rock amendments, compost
and biochar
• Food waster digesters

Almaraz, Houlton et al, in preparation

What if we half people chose flexitarian diets and
half of global agriculture adopted technological
approaches to cut emissions by 2050?
 50:50 by 2050 = ~negative 15 billion tons of C emissions

Livestock feed (grass) Livestock feed (grain) Biochar

Agroforestry
0.041 Gt CO2eq yr-1 0.576 Gt CO2eq yr-1 0.825 Gt CO2eq yr-1
-9.329 Gt CO2eq yr-1
$60 ton-1 CO2eq $60 ton-1 CO2eq $158 ton-1 CO2eq
$1.4 ton-1 CO2eq
Fertilizer production
0.41 Gt CO2eq yr-1

Manure digestion Rock amendments Compost Biochar

0.276 Gt CO2eq yr-1 -2.34 Gt CO2eq yr-1 -1.448 Gt CO2eq yr-1 -0.498 Gt CO2eq yr-1
$200 ton-1 CO2eq $40 ton-1 CO2eq $10 ton-1 CO2eq $158 ton-1 CO2eq

Reduced trawling Seaweed farming

0.021 Gt CO2eq yr-1 -5.328 Gt CO2eq yr-1
$543 ton-1 CO2eq

Almaraz, Houlton et al, in preparation

Challenges and issues to follow
• Climate risks to meeting world food demands
• Nutrient deficiencies in a CO2 rich world
Altogether now – it’s not “either/or”, it’s a
“Yes…and that too” challenge