Climate change mitigation through a win-win transition for farmers

The context

Climate change increases the vulnerability of agricultural production. It is urgent to act both to adapt to it and to mitigate it.

However, the agricultural sector has a responsibility with regard to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that have changed the climate balance. Indeed, agriculture is a major emitter of methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O), two greenhouse gases that have the strongest heating powers.

Agriculture was responsible for 68% and 88.6% of their emissions, respectively, in 2018 (CITEPA Secten 2020 Report). The agricultural sector contributes for 19% of the emissions in France and for 88% of the nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions. The field crop sector represents one of the highest carbon storage potentials in France.

The carbon issue: Terres Inovia supports volunteers

There is currently a great need for information and support on carbon issues; producers, collectors, industrialists, and local authorities are all looking for ways to position themselves and some are already very involved in projects.
Terres Inovia is strongly committed to the issue of mitigation. The institute is a member of the Club Climat Agriculture and the drafting committee for the sectoral method for field crops.
It also supports anyone interested in projects that can provide additional remuneration to farmers who commit to agricultural systems and practices that reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

What is the Low Carbon Label?


 

                              

 

To facilitate the achievement of its National Low Carbon Strategy (NLCS) objectives, France has been carrying a carbon market certification framework, the low carbon label, since 2019.  Communities, companies, and even citizens are willing to pay for climate-beneficial actions on a voluntary basis, for example to offset their residual emissions. The low-carbon label offers funders guarantees of the quality and environmental integrity of projects.

The objective is to make transparent an innovative process that offers financing opportunities for local projects to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the agricultural and forestry sectors.
It provides a new source of remuneration to financially reward those who, within agricultural production, contribute to France's climate objectives.

This label encourages producers and other partners to more easily initiate virtuous territorial projects. It is indeed through a combination of incentives and financing that the agricultural transition will be possible. It is necessary to equip the sector to move in this direction.  
A sectoral method for field crops since August 2021

At the request of the field crop interprofessional consortium, Arvalis, Terres Inovia, ITB-ARTB, with the support of AgroSolutions, have been working since 2020 to draft a sectoral method for field crops to account for greenhouse gas reductions in territorial projects under the Low Carbon Label.


The drafting committee has involved the following in the development of the field crop methodology
-A scientific committee composed of the guarantors of the label framework (ADEME, I4CE, DGEC)
-A committee of associated experts (from research and development organizations) via working groups
- A committee of users (associations and private individuals) for exchanges over time.
The role of Terres Inovia


Terres Inovia has worked especially on the reductions linked to the downstream of agricultural production and the animation of the group on co-benefits. These are benefits of the project that are additional to climate change mitigation, such as maintaining or increasing biodiversity and reducing soil erosion.
A validated method


Approved as a "low-carbon label" by the public authorities on August 23, 2021, the "LBC-Growing Crops" method is in line with the methods already approved (such as the CarbonAgri method for cattle farms and the Hedges method).
It will also be linked to other methods currently being studied, such as the one on the specific lever for the inclusion of seed legumes used for food (Legumes method).
Advantages for virtuous projects


By using the field crop method, the project leader will be able to capitalize on the emission reductions obtained in five years by implementing a combination of levers to reduce direct and indirect GHG emissions or to increase carbon storage in the soil. If approved, the legume method will focus on reducing GHGs through the use of legumes in rotations.

Climate change mitigation levers involving our crops


Production systems that include crops that are low in nitrogen inputs (legumes and sunflower) or that return a lot of organic matter to the soil (cover crops or rapeseed) are well placed to participate in climate change mitigation.

Terres Inovia is committed to accompanying the ecological transition with willing actors to aim for:

-effective and certain reductions in GHG emissions with seed legumes (soybean, pea, faba bean, lupin, lentil and chickpea) first by avoiding GHG emissions related to the absence of nitrogen fertilizer inputs on seed legume crops and then by reduction under the crops that follow them in the crop rotation. This is because there are fewer N2O and CO2 emissions in the field and upstream than in systems without seed legumes. Previous studies have estimated that including a seed legume in a low-diversity cropping system results in an 8-25% reduction in GHG.
 

-Carbon sequestration made possible by the presence of rapeseed or the addition of plant cover in agrosystems: rapeseed favors the return of biomass to the soil via its crop residues and can therefore participate in the maintenance or storage of carbon in soils over the long term, all the more so if it is combined with gelatinous legumes.

 

Climate change mitigation in relation to food sovereignty

 


How can projects to increase national plant protein production converge with France's GHG reduction objectives? Oilseed cakes and legume seeds or fodder are sources of protein-rich materials (more than 15% protein content). This is why the National Plant Protein Strategy must be combined with the challenge of mitigating climate change.

The objectives of Cap Protéines are to maintain 2 million hectares of oilseeds (rapeseed and sunflower) and to double the surface area of legumes (seed and forage). This represents an increase of 500,000 ha of grain legumes and thus a change in the use of only 5% of the 10 million ha of UAA for field crops, which does not disrupt France's cereal export function. On a national scale, INRAe had estimated that 1.2 Mha of seed legumes represent a reduction lever of 1.7 MtCO2e (Pellerin et al 2013).

 

To learn more :
 Comment réduire les émissions de GES et stocker du carbone en systèmes de grandes cultures? «
Cap protéines œuvre à accroître notre souveraineté protéique

Le label bas carbone