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Technologies to deliver food and climate security through agriculture

Nature Plants volume 7, pages 250–255 (2021)Cite this article

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Abstract

Agriculture is a major contributor to environmental degradation and climate change. At the same time, a growing human population with changing dietary preferences is driving ever increasing demand for food. The need for urgent reform of agriculture is widely recognized and has resulted in a number of ambitious plans. However, there is credible evidence to suggest that these are unlikely to meet the twin objectives of keeping the increase in global temperature within the target of 2.0 °C above preindustrial levels set out in the Paris Agreement and delivering global food security. Here, we discuss a series of technological options to bring about change in agriculture for delivering food security and providing multiple routes to the removal of CO2 from the atmosphere. These technologies include the use of silicate amendment of soils to sequester atmospheric CO2, agronomy technologies to increase soil organic carbon, and high-yielding resource-efficient crops to deliver increased agricultural yield, thus freeing land that is less suited for intensive cropping for land use practices that will further increase carbon storage. Such alternatives include less intensive regenerative agriculture, afforestation and bioenergy crops coupled with carbon capture and storage technologies.

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Fig. 1: Options for food security and climate change mitigation using soil and crop innovations and agricultural land reclamation.

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Acknowledgements

D.J.B. and S.A.B. acknowledge funding from the Leverhulme Trust through a Leverhulme Research Centre Award (RC-2015-029). S.P.L. acknowledges funding from the DOE Center for Advanced Bioenergy and Bioproducts Innovation (US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Biological and Environmental Research under award number DE-SC0018420). The input of P.S. contributes to the DEVIL (NE/M021327/1) and Soils‐R‐GRREAT (NE/P019455/1) projects.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK

    Peter Horton

  2. Carl R. Woese Institute of Genomic Biology, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL, USA

    Stephen P. Long

  3. Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University, Bailrigg, UK

    Stephen P. Long

  4. Institute of Biological and Environmental Sciences, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, UK

    Pete Smith

  5. Global Food and Environment Institute, School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK

    Steven A. Banwart

  6. Leverhulme Centre for Climate Change Mitigation, Department of Animal and Plant Sciences, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK

    David J. Beerling

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P.H., S.P.L., P.S., S.A.B. and D.J.B. wrote the paper.

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Correspondence to David J. Beerling.

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Horton, P., Long, S.P., Smith, P. et al. Technologies to deliver food and climate security through agriculture. Nat. Plants 7, 250–255 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-021-00877-2

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