Climate smart agriculture and global food-crop production

reduction at best of those emissions. Given these limited abatement levels, the large scale adop- tion of alternative production systems (e.g. silvopastoral systems, agroforestry practices, preci- sion agriculture) should be considered, and additional opportunities for abatement ought to be found elsewhere along the value chains [75]. Importantly, results indicate that recent concerns expressed in the literature regarding the negative effects of carbon tax on food security might be misplaced. In actuality, carbon pricing could help internalizing the external costs of GHG emission and steer the agriculture sector towards more carbon-efficient methods of production and distribution. Clearly, one can always impose a sufficiently high carbon tax with detrimental effects on the food security of a significant share of the population. However, our results for population at risk of hunger show that alternative practices and technologies, of which only a sample is explored in this study, can limit these effects if not completely offset them. In our analysis we did not explicitly explore the effects of policies that promote a reduction of GHG emissions. However, the results obtained using adoption Rule 2 show that as the emphasis shifts from yield gains to reducing emission intensity, emission abatement increases albeit at the cost of agricultural out- put. Resolving the tradeoff between emissions reduction and production in an economically efficient manner depends not only on carbon pricing or emission-reduction incentives but

also on a proper pricing of the factors of production. An appropriate pricing of inputs like water and nitrogen fertilizers would promote the adoption of water-saving practices such as AWD with no significant reduction of productivity, and the adoption of practices that increase nitrogen use efficiency, with a consequent reduction in emissions and an increase in productivity. Fig 4. Changes in average yearly cumulative production of maize, rice and wheat and GHG emissions for alternative scenarios for the period 2010–2050. Columns indicate the average tailoring of CSA practices; whisker bars identify results for the poor and optimal tailoring Source: Authors. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0231764.g004 PLOS ONE Climate smart agriculture and global food-crop production PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0231764 April 29, 2020 12 / 19