An Assessment of the Interaction between Carbon Dioxide Emissions and Available Nutrients from the Lifecycle of Several Agricultural Crops

Abstract

Agricultural products cause the emission of certain significant amount of greenhouse gases. Carbon dioxide (CO₂) is one of the most important greenhouse gases and its emissions are increasing day by day as a result of the increase in agricultural productivity. This study aims to pinpoint the most environmentally friendly crops and fruits that are sources of good nutrients and emits less CO₂ throughout their life cycles. Relation between nutrient availability and CO₂ emissions from staple foods namely; wheat, maize, rice, potato, sugarcane, sugar beet, soybean, palm oil, sunflower, rapeseed, banana, apple and grape are investigated in this study. Secondary data was collected from dataset’s website. Spearman's rank and diagram interpretation technique are used to find out the correlation between nutrient availability and CO₂ emissions. Among carbohydrate diets, rice emits 4 kg CO₂ kg^-1 of crops, which is significantly higher than that of wheat, maize and potato. However, the amount of carbohydrates in rice (0.26%) is less than those carbohydrate diets. Similarly, sugarcane emits more CO₂ as 2.6 kg kg^-1 of crops than sugar beet (1.4 kg kg^-1 of crops) among sugar crops. Soybean and palm oil emit more CO₂ as 6 kg kg^-1 and 7.2 kg kg^-1 of crops, respectively, as compared to other oilseed crops, but every oilseed crop has the same food value. Among fruits, bananas emit less CO₂ (1.1 kg kg^-1 of crops) and have a higher content of carbohydrates (0.23%) than other selected fruits. Proper crop selection based on nutrient content can lead to lower CO₂ emissions than at present and a consistent balance between environmental and nutritional needs in the future.