Bummer: Feeding People With Rice Is Bad For Climate Doom

By William Teach May 27, 2026 – 7:15 am

Hmm, I wonder why Politico will recommend?
Rice Feeds Billions of People — but Its Role in Fueling Climate Change Is Growing


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.
OK, and?
Farmers have ways to reduce their rice crops’ emissions without lowering their yields. If every grower used the best currently available “climate-smart” options, we found that global rice emissions could be reduced by about 10% by midcentury. However, greater reductions are needed to slow climate change, which would require developing additional, more effective strategies.
And those are?
At the same time, rice farmers are using more fertilizers and organic amendments, such as straw and manure, planting more productive rice varieties and growing the plants closer together. The result is more rice but also more greenhouse gas emissions.
We found that one practice in particular – leaving rice stalks in the field after harvest and then plowing them into the soil to improve soil fertility – was responsible for about 18% of rice’s increase in overall net emissions since the 1960s. The reason: It increases the organic matter in the soil, which microbes then decompose, creating more methane emissions.
OK, so, make growing rice more inefficient. And, later on that is exactly what is recommended. How many people do the Warmists want erased, particularly in the developing world?


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