Introducing greenhouse gas mitigation as a development objective in rice-based agriculture: I. Generation of technical coefficients

This study presents a modeling tool to assess emission of greenhouse gases (GHG) from the agricultural sector as affected by land-use and residue utilization options. The overall purpose of this tool is twofold: (i) a spreadsheet model for comprehensive compilation of the direct and indirect emissions from land management, residue-burning and fossil fuel consumption through on-farm and off-farm operations and (ii) a decision support tool to explore economically viable mitigation options through detailed cost-benefit analysis of different technological options. We developed TechnoGAS (technical coefficient generator for mitigation technologies of greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural sectors), which integrates analytical and expert knowledge with regional databases on bio-physical, agronomic and socio-economic features to establish input-output relationships ('Technical Coefficients') related to GHG emissions in agriculture. The approach includes emissions of methane (CH4) from rice fields, rice straw burning and cattle; carbon dioxide (CO2) from fossil fuel and soil organic carbon decline as well as nitrous oxide (N2O) from soil, rice straw burning and fertilizer use. To illustrate the approach of the spreadsheet model for comprehensive compilation of emissions, we applied TechnoGAS for an entire rice-wheat cropping cycle in the state of Haryana in northern India as a case study. Twenty technologies of rice production, which can be adopted by farmers, are analysed for their operation-specific emissions including their global warming potential (GWP). The technologies differ in terms of water regime, residue management/utilization, soil management and additives, which represent different mitigation options for GHG emissions. With the current farmers' practice in various districts in Haryana, soil-borne emissions are the major source of GHG contributing 53% of the average GWP (3288 kg CO2 equivalent ha(-1)) in rice followed by burning of rice straw (13% of the GWP). Cattle, farm operations, off-farm and inorganic fertilizer contributes 12%, 10%, 10% and 2% of the GWP, respectively. Emissions from wheat are relatively low (1204 kg CO, equivalent ha-1) as there is no CH4 emission and wheat straw is not burnt. Different mitigation technologies show pronounced effects on the GWP of the rice crop and varied between 1715 kg CO2 equivalent ha(-1) with continuous flooding, urea and rice straw used for building materials and 10,020 kg CO2 equivalent ha(-1) with continuous flooding, and application of nutrients through organic manure. Compared to current farmers' practice, 13 technologies are found to have the potential to reduce the GWP by 8-51%, but they also reduce the net income of farmers. Upscaling of the estimates to the entire state of Haryana shows that the GWP with the current farmers' practice in rice is 2617 Gg CO2 equivalent. Modification of water management from continuous flooding to alternate flooding or application of urea alone instead of urea plus FYM will reduce the GWP by 15% and 29%, respectively, while feeding of rice straw to cattle and supplying N through urea will reduce it by 41% compared to the current practice of burning rice straw and use of FYM. The study shows that the TechnoGAS tool can be used for estimating GHG emission from various land-use types and for identifying promising mitigation options. A detailed cost/benefit analysis is supplied by Wassmann and Pathak [Wassmann, R., Pathak, H. , this olume. Introducing greenhouse gas mitigation as a development objective in rice-based agriculture: II. Cost-benefit assessment for different technologies, regions and scales.]. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.