| The catch is, modern agriculture isn't limited to "surface-level biology." >All of the carbon you exhale to the atmosphere comes from the food you eat, which gets its carbon from the atmosphere via photosynthesis. This is true, but also misleading. When you include the nitrous oxide, methane, diesel fuel, and loss of soil carbon, agriculture is actually net CO2e positive. >Agriculture, Forestry, and Other Land Use (24% of 2010 global greenhouse gas emissions): Greenhouse gas emissions from this sector come mostly from agriculture (cultivation of crops and livestock) and deforestation. This estimate does not include the CO2 that ecosystems remove from the atmosphere by sequestering carbon in biomass, dead organic matter, and soils, which offset approximately 20% of emissions from this sector. So in other words, globally our agriculture emits 5 units of CO2e for every 1 unit sequestered by photosynthesis. https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emiss... https://www.eia.gov/environment/emissions/ghg_report/ghg_nit... When you include the entire supply chain from field-to-fork (agriculture, transport, refrigeration, processing, preparation) the general rule of thumb is that 10 kilocalories of fossil fuel energy go into making 1 kilocalorie of food. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/plugged-in/10-calories-... |