Chinese farmers walk though rice fields in an area known as the Wanfenglin National Scenic Spot in Xingyi, Guizhou Province in 2017. File Photo by Stephen Shaver/UPI | License Photo
Rice feeds more than half the world. From terraced paddies in Southeast Asia to irrigated fields in China and India, it underpins daily meals for billions of people.
But the same flooded soils that help rice thrive also create ideal conditions for microbes that release climate-warming gases.
In a new study, our team of environment and agriculture scientists found that greenhouse gas emissions from rice paddies have nearly doubled globally since the 1960s, averaging about 1.1 billion tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent emissions per year in the 2010s. That's roughly equal to the annual emissions of 239 million cars.
This makes rice-growing the largest emissions source in agriculture outside of livestock, and rice demand is expected to keep rising.
