Carbon footprints of commodity field crops in global markets

Abstract

Abstract Sustainability attributes are increasingly a source of competitive advantage for commodity crops in international markets, but fair comparisons are difficult given the diversity of agronomic environments and practices, complex supply chains, and heterogeneity in assessment methods and supporting data quality/availability. We adapted and applied a framework to transparently identify and source best available data, consistently model, and compare the carbon footprints of rapeseed, wheat and field peas produced in Canada, Australia, France, Germany and the United States. Canadian crops, especially those produced in the province of Saskatchewan, had much lower carbon footprints than the same crops produced in other countries when soil carbon changes were included and, in most cases, also when they were excluded. Transportation-to-market makes small contributions to global food system emissions, but is proportionately more important for low impact crops. For Saskatchewan crops, however, these emissions were more than offset by low production-related emissions in most cases.