Why Yield Matters Fertilizer use increases crop yields per acre, meaning more food can be grown on less land. That, in turn, reduces the need to convert carbon-sequestering forestland into farmland. Increasing crop yields thereby works to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by limiting deforestation. In other words, yield is central to sustainable agriculture.
Between 1970 and 2010, world grain harvests doubled, but the amount of agricultural land in use increased only 7 percent, saving countless acres of forestland. That’s in large part because of fertilizer.
Farming that doesn’t use synthetic fertilizers simply doesn’t yield as much food. For example, according to the USDA, farms that don’t use synthetic fertilizer produce approximately one-third less crops per acre.
Let’s look at a hypothetical scenario – one in which you weren’t going to use synthetic fertilizer at all – to see why this matters. On average, synthetic fertilizer production emits 648 megatonnes (Mt) carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) per year. If you need 30 percent more land on average to produce the same amount of food, the land conversion away from carbon-sequestering forests will actually add 1,135 MtCO2e emissions from forest conversion. That’s about 500 more MtCO2e in emissions than you would have had otherwise — hardly a sustainable way to feed the world.
Source: FAOSTAT
Why Natural Gas Matters Not all nitrogen production is the same. While CO2 is an unavoidable chemical byproduct of ammonia production, the level of CO2 emissions generated is closely tied to the type of feedstock – natural gas or coal – used and the energy efficiency of production plants.
Operational scale and process improvements have reduced average global natural gas plant emissions over time.
Source: CRU, Fertecon, TFI, CF, EIA
Anthracite-based coal production has the highest emissions potential in the fertilizer industry at more than twice that of average natural gas production.
Source: EIA, CRU, Fertecon, TFI, CF
Coal accounts for a large portion of the global nitrogen industry’s uncontrolled CO2 emissions.
Chinese coal-based producers emit 46 percent of CO2 emissions, despite representing only 30 percent of production globally.
Global NH3 Production (182 MMT)
Global Uncontrolled CO2 Emissions (475 MMT)
Natural gas-based producers account for 70 percent of global NH3 production, with North American and Middle East gas-based producers emitting the least amount of CO2 on a per ton of NH3 basis.
Source: FAOSTAT, USDA
