Growing More While Emitting Less? Decoupling US Agricultural Production and Greenhouse Gas Emissions

We decompose state‐level US agricultural greenhouse gas emissions growth into output growth, input emission intensity, and total factor productivity (TFP). Combining EPA emissions data with USDA productivity accounts over 1990–2015, we find that TFP growth historically slowed emissions but has recently weakened. Declining input emission intensity, concentrated in the Southeast, has become the dominant mitigating factor. Further decomposition suggests that land productivity gains are more closely linked to emission reductions than labor productivity gains.