Creating a Sustainable Food Future

The report concludes that the realistic potential for large-scale soil carbon sequestration is limited due to scientific uncertainties, practical implementation challenges, and nutrient requirements. It argues against treating soil carbon as a primary offset for emissions, suggesting instead a 'no-regrets' strategy where carbon sequestration is a cobenefit of boosting crop and pasture productivity, agroforestry, and soil restoration, particularly in nutrient-deficient regions like sub-Saharan Africa.

• The authors conclude that the realistic potential for sequestering carbon in agricultural soils is limited and should be viewed as a cobenefit of increasing productivity to stabilize soil carbon, rather than a primary offset for other emissions.
• Efforts to increase soil carbon by adding organic materials like manure, mulch, and crop residues often result in double-counting or simply shifting carbon from one storage location to another. For example, eliminating all global residue burning and incorporating those residues into soils would sequester only about 19 Mt of carbon annually, which is less than 1% of likely 2050 agricultural production emissions.
• No-till farming faces significant practical obstacles, including high variability in carbon gains, potential increases in nitrous oxide emissions in the short term, and a lack of long-term persistence. In Iowa during the 1990s, the probability of no-till persisting for two consecutive years was estimated at only 8%.
• Claims that improved grazing management can create 'carbon-neutral' beef are criticized because they often ignore the carbon gains that would occur if the land returned to forest, or the global emissions increase if reduced European production leads to pasture expansion in less efficient regions.
• A fundamental constraint to soil carbon sequestration is the requirement for additional nitrogen; sequestering 1.2 Gt of carbon per year (the 4 per 1000 Initiative goal) would require a 75% increase in global nitrogen application. This makes large-scale sequestration particularly infeasible in nutrient-deficient regions like sub-Saharan Africa.
• There is evidence that global agricultural soils may currently be losing carbon, potentially due to net losses of nitrogen from croplands. If certain estimates for cereal crops are correct, these losses could account for 50 million tons of CO2 emissions per year.
• The report identifies the most promising opportunities for carbon gains as those that provide independent economic benefits, such as increasing crop and pasture productivity, developing agroforestry, and rebuilding degraded soils in sub-Saharan Africa to ensure food security.

APA

World Resources Institute (n.d.). Creating a Sustainable Food Future. https://files.wri.org/s3fs-public/uploads/wrr-creating-sustainable-food-future-chapter-30.pdf

Chicago

World Resources Institute. Creating a Sustainable Food Future. n.d. https://files.wri.org/s3fs-public/uploads/wrr-creating-sustainable-food-future-chapter-30.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=World Resources Institute |title=Creating a Sustainable Food Future |url=https://files.wri.org/s3fs-public/uploads/wrr-creating-sustainable-food-future-chapter-30.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{worldresourcesinstitutendcreating, author = {{World Resources Institute}}, title = {{Creating a Sustainable Food Future}}, institution = {World Resources Institute}, url = {https://files.wri.org/s3fs-public/uploads/wrr-creating-sustainable-food-future-chapter-30.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }