1. David J Lewis

Abstract The world's agricultural system has come under increasing scrutiny recently as an important driver of global climate change, creating a demand for indicators that estimate the climatic impacts of agricultural commodities. Such carbon footprints, however, have in most cases excluded emissions from land-use change and the proposed methodologies for including this significant emissions source suffer from different shortcomings. Here, we propose a new methodology for calculating land-use change carbon footprints for agricultural commodities and illustrate this methodology by applying it to three of the most prominent agricultural commodities driving tropical deforestation: Brazilian beef and soybeans, and Indonesian palm oil. We estimate land-use change carbon footprints in 2010 to be 66 tCO 2/t meat (carcass weight) for Brazilian beef, 0.89 tCO 2/t for Brazilian soybeans, and 7.5 tCO 2/t for Indonesian palm oil, using a 10 year amortization period.

David J Lewis

The main advantage of the proposed methodology is its flexibility: it can be applied in a tiered approach, using detailed data where it is available while still allowing for estimation of footprints for a broad set of countries and agricultural commodities; it can be applied at different scales, estimating both national and subnational footprints; it can be adopted to account both for direct (proximate) and indirect drivers of land-use change. It is argued that with an increasing commercialization and globalization of the drivers of land-use change, the proposed carbon footprint methodology could help leverage the power needed to alter environmentally destructive land-use practices within the global agricultural system by providing a tool for assessing the environmental impacts of production, thereby informing consumers about the impacts of consumption and incentivizing producers to become more environmentally responsible. Filename Description application/msexcel, 90K Data S1. A derivation of the simplified LUC-CFP expression, as well as a detailed account for the data (sources, justifications, and full data set) used to calculate the LUC-CFPs for Brazilian beef and soybeans and Indonesian palm oil. Application/PDF, 233K Data S2.

Land use cover change (LUCC) has a crucial role in global environmental change, impacting both ecosystem services and biodiversity. Evaluating the trends and possible alternatives of LUCC allows quantification and identification of the hotspots of change.

The full calculations of the LUC-CFPs presented here. Please note: Wiley-Blackwell is not responsible for the content or functionality of any supporting information supplied by the authors. Any queries (other than missing content) should be directed to the corresponding author for the article. Related content.