Box3

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*How Agriculture and Land Use Change & Forestry can contribute to CO2 emissions*
*Agriculture*
*CO₂ emissions from fossil fuel use*	The main source of CO₂ emissions in the agriculture sector comes from the use of fossil fuels for machinery, tractors and other vehicles, heating of farm buildings, grain drying, and horticultural greenhouse heating.
*CO₂ emissions from agricultural soils*	Agricultural soils may emit or remove CO₂: for example, peat compost used as soil admendment in agricultural and gardening may result in CO₂ emissions or removals.
*CO and CO₂ emissions from agricultural residue burning*	Biomass burning and the loss of soil C associated with the conversion of native ecosystems to agriculture use in the tropics is believed to be the largest non fossil fuel source of CO₂ emissions to the atmosphere (source: OECD). In Western Europe, it is assumed that emissions of CO₂ due to burning agricultural waste are part of a cycle, with emissions being reabsorbed by an equivalent amount by crops and vegetation regrowing in the following season. Therefore net emissions are considered to be zero.
*Land Use Change & Forestry*
*Changes in Forest & Other Woody Biomass Stocks*	In the IPCC methodology, this is intended to account for all significant human interactions with forests and other woody biomass stocks which affect CO₂ flows to and from the atmosphere, but which do not result in a land-use change (so, natural, unmanaged (for wood products) forests or forests regrowing naturally on abandoned lands are not included). Activities which can produce significant carbon flows are commercial management, harvest of industrial roundwood (logs) and fuelwood, production and use of wood commmodities, establishment and management of commercial plantations as well as planting of trees in urban, village and other non-forest locations.
*CO₂ from forest and grassland conversion*	This refers to CO₂ released by the burning and decay of biomass cleared when existing forests and natural grasslands are converted to other uses, such as agriculture.
*CO₂ emissions from other Land Use Change Activities*	This refers to the release of CO₂ associated with changes in the amount of organic carbon stored in soils as function of the balance between inputs to soil of photosynthetically-fixed carbon and losses of soil carbon via decomposition.