Tracking the carbon footprint of agriculture in Saudi Arabia to promote sustainable food systems

Growing global population and climate change concerns have caused major challenges for sustainable food production to meet the growing food demand. High mechanization, drought intensity, fertilizer application, energy use, and irregular climate change adaptation are the major challenges faced by agriculture. In the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the climate is very harsh, and the country depends highly on agriculture to meet domestic food demands. This generates major challenges for the agricultural system to produce sufficient quantities of food with minimal carbon footprints. Therefore, this study aims to analyze the impact of growing mechanization (Mech), water productivity (WP), climate change technology adaptation (CCA), fertilizer consumption (FC), agriculture growth (AG), and energy consumption in agriculture (ENA) on CO₂ emissions in agriculture in both the short and long run. For this purpose, an autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model was applied to the data for 1992–2021. According to the unit root test, all variables were integrated in order I(1), and the ARDL bound test for the cointegration tests ensured the long-run relationships among the variables. Moreover, the ARDL model passed all diagnostic tests, and CUSUM and CUSUMQ confirmed the stability of the model. The findings revealed that Mech has a strong negative impact in the long run while significant positive impact in the short run on CO₂ emission. Both WP and CCA significantly reduced CO₂ emissions in both the short and long run. FC causes an increase in CO₂ emissions in both the short and long run. AG reduces CO₂ emissions, whereas ENA increases CO₂ emissions only in the long run. The findings suggest that the government should focus on efficient and eco-friendly mechanization, energy sources, adoption of efficient irrigation systems, and promote R&D for advanced climate change-oriented technologies to enhance agricultural environmental sustainability by reducing CO₂ emissions in agriculture.