Farming activities in the U.S. accounted for 11.2 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in 2020. From 2019-20, agricultural GHG emissions declined from 699 to 670 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, but they increased from 10.6 percent to 11.2 percent as a share of the U.S. economy.
The Environmental Protection Agency estimated that in 2020, agriculture produced 5.6 percent of GHGs as nitrous oxide, 4.2 percent as methane, 0.8 percent as on-farm carbon dioxide and 0.6 percent as indirect emissions through the electricity that agriculture consumes.
Emissions come from cropping activities that emit nitrous oxide, such as fertilizer application, manure storage and management, and enteric fermentation, which produces methane.
Of the economic sectors in the U.S. defined by the Energy Information Administration, industry (excluding agricultural emissions) accounted for the largest portion of total greenhouse gas emissions (30.3 percent), followed by transportation, residential, commercial, agriculture and U.S. territories (no specific consumption data can be attributed within the territories, so they are listed as a group). — USDA’s Economic Research Service
