Abstract Potential price premiums for reduced carbon footprint of field crops have led producers to be concerned about the carbon footprint of their crops. This research addresses that concern, using two life‐cycle emissions models, Greenhouse gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy use in Technologies (GREET) and Integrated Farm System Model (IFSM), to establish carbon intensity (CI) that producers might obtain for corn (Z ea mays L.) and soybean Glycine max (L.) Merr. produced under various conditions in three Northern Plains sub‐regions. The expected CIs range from 0.24 to 0.42 lb CO 2 e lb −1 of grain dry matter. Expected CIs for rainfed crops are 8%–18% higher than those estimated for comparable irrigated crops. The expected CIs are intended to be similar to those that a producer would likely obtain from employing either the GREET or the IFSM model for their own crops. Carbon emissions offsets for switching from conventional to reduced tillage are not yet well established, but as estimated by the current GREET model that tillage switch would reduce corn CI by as much as 19%, and soybean CI even more. Switching from conventional tillage to no‐till with a cover crop would reduce expected corn CI by around 90% for irrigated corn and well over 100% for rainfed corn. Comparable tillage switching for soybean would result in CI reductions of up to 129% under irrigation and 157% for rainfed production. Thus, the models identify a wide range of possible CIs that a producer might be able to achieve.
Perrin et al. (Wed,) studied this question.