Grassland Protection

Based on historic growth on large farming operations, our analysis projects the total area under conservation agriculture will continue growing from 148 million hectares to peak at 400-327 million hectares by 2035. We assume that as regenerative annual cropping becomes more widely used, farms that have already adopted conservation agriculture will convert to these more effective soil fertility practices in response to consumer demand for fewer harmful herbicides. The benefits of that conversion are counted by the regenerative annual cropping solution. Nonetheless, conservation agriculture offers significant benefits in the interim, reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 13.4-9.4 gigatons based on average carbon sequestration rates of 0.25- 0.78 tons of carbon per hectare per year, depending on region. Establishment costs are low at $91.9-65.2 billion with a lifetime operational savings of $2.8-1.9 trillion and lifetime net profit of $113.1-77.7 billion.