Food is a huge source of methane emissions. Fixing that is no easy feat.

By Frida Garza. Originally published in Grist on September 16, 2024.

An international team of researchers found that global emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, rose faster than ever in the three years ending in 2022. In a new report from the Global Carbon Project, dozens of scientists reviewed many different emitters of methane and found that two-thirds of methane emissions came from human activity in 2020, while the rest came from natural sources like wetlands.

The way we eat, and the way we dispose of food, play a huge role in humanity’s growing methane problem. The report zooms in on roughly two decades of data: one from 2000 to 2009, and another from 2010 to 2019. (It also includes analysis of emissions in 2020 and beyond where data was available.) The authors found that agriculture and waste — including landfills and wastewater management — were responsible for releasing almost double the methane emissions into the atmosphere as fossil fuel production and use from 2010 to 2019. 

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