A new study assesses the climate impact of agricultural irrigation in the United States and finds that its greenhouse gas benefits significantly exceed its emissions. Irrigation itself produces some greenhouse gases, but it also helps farmers maintain crop yields.
The research argues that if irrigation were suddenly stopped, crop production would drop, and the lost output would need to be replaced by expanding farmland. That expansion would require converting natural ecosystems into agricultural land, which would release large amounts of greenhouse gases. One estimate cited is about 6.86 gigatons of emissions from hypothetical land-use change required to make up for yield losses.
Both outlets describe the key result in relative terms: the emissions associated with replacing lost yields through land conversion would be vastly higher than irrigation’s ongoing emissions. The reported comparison indicates that the climate benefit is roughly equivalent to 363 years of current U.S. irrigation emissions, or about 363 times more emissions depending on how the comparison is framed.
