Higher Levels of No-Till Agriculture Associated with Lower PM in the Corn Belt
2022
Behrer, A. Patrick | Lobell, David
No-till approaches to agricultural soil management have been encouraged as a means of reducing soil erosion, reducing water pollution, and increasing carbon sequestration. An understudied additional benefit of no-till approaches may be improvements in local air quality due to reductions in both machinery use and dust emissions. This paper leverages recent advances in remote sensing and air pollution modeling to examine this question at a landscape scale. Combining data on daily fine particulate matter levels with satellite measures of no-till uptake since 2005, the paper shows a strong association between increasing adoption of no-till agricultural practices and reductions in county average fine particulate matter pollution over more than 28 million hectares of cropland in the U.S. Corn Belt. The reduction in local pollution implies substantial monetary benefits from reductions in mortality that are roughly one-fourth as large as the carbon benefits. The benefits of mortality reductions are also, by themselves, nearly equal to the current monetary costs of subsidizing no-till practices.
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