Comparison of Carbon Emission Assessment Using Extension Budgets and Real Farm Data: Cotton In the Texas Plains

Most studies on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from agricultural production have used crop production budgets from state extension services as the data source for production inputs.  However, the purpose of these budgets is to provide a planning tool to generate farming costs and returns rather than to reconstruct the farming activity or to create carbon emissions estimates.  This study uses production data collected from a group of farming operations in the Texas High Plains producing irrigated cotton across a multiyear period, 2005-2010.  Carbon emissions from use of diesel, nitrogen, phosphorous, herbicide, insecticide, and water from the sample farms were estimated and used  to develop a  distribution of carbon emissions, and the amount of carbon emissions for irrigated cotton as estimated from the budget was compared to the carbon emissions distribution from the actual farm operations.  Results indicate that the budget-based  emission value lies outside the 95% confidence interval of the distribution, which raises questions about reliability of GHG estimates based on crop budgets.