By Danielle Kaeding
A report released this month finds Wisconsin farming would have to undergo a major transformation to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
Even so, authors admit the changes they propose aren’t likely to be realistically achieved under current political and socioeconomic constraints.
Environmental group Clean Wisconsin released the report along with groups that include the Savanna Institute, Michael Fields Agricultural Institute and the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Grassland 2.0 initiative.
While hurdles exist, they say their findings identify barriers and changes needed to reduce state agriculture emissions, which rose by 20 percent in the last two decades.
The report’s authors note Wisconsin’s climate action plan currently recommends using state programs and funding that pay farmers to increase carbon storage through practices that include no-till farming, cover crops and management of nitrogen fertilizer.
Paul Mathewson, the report’s lead author with Clean Wisconsin, said increasing those practices alone would only offset 6 to 9 percent of the roughly 19 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions produced by the state’s agriculture sector. At most, tweaks to growing crops like corn and soybeans, as well as confined dairy production, would only offset a third of those emissions.
“Simple changes to that system — the annual cropping systems — like no-till and cover crop, are really just not adequate to really get us anywhere close to net-zero,” Mathewson said.
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