Quantifying the effect of agricultural greenhouse gas emissions, food production index, and land use on cereal production in South Asia

Cereal grains are widely used as staple foods, therefore ensuring a steady supply of food globally requires cereal production, and South Asia contributes significantly to this endeavor. However, the global food system is thought to be responsible for around one-fourth of all greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, with grain production being a major contributor to this system. With the increasing need for food, especially cereal grains, it is difficult to reduce GHG emissions from food production on limited land. However, the cereal production - land use agricultural GHG emissions nexus has been disregarded in earlier studies which needs to be identified for the sustainable food production system. Therefore, this research aims to assess the interactions between agricultural GHG emissions, food production index, and land usage on cereal production in South Asia. This study employs the Fully Modified Ordinary Least Square (FMOLS) model as a baseline model for a panel data set of 1990-2020 and further checks the validity via Dynamic Ordinary Least Square (DOLS) and robust least square procedure to tackle the endogeneity, serial correlation, and outlier issues. Findings confirm that growing the food production index and land usage boosts cereal grain production in South Asia, whereas rising agricultural CO2 emissions lessen output in the long run. In this paper, we also deploy Dumitrescu and Hurlin's (2012) panel causality test to prove a dual causal connection between the food production index, land use, and cereal food production. From a policy perspective, the findings indicate the necessity of integrating green agro-technology into land cultivation practices in order to achieve increased grain production and mitigate GHG emissions originating from the agricultural sector.