Feeding the Future: Agroecological Pathways to Climate Adaptation and Food Security

Dairy production is a biologically and operationally complex source of greenhouse gases because enteric methane, manure-derived methane and nitrous oxide, and carbon dioxide associated with energy and inputs arise through different processes and respond differently to management. This critical narrative review evaluates recent advances in measuring, modelling and mitigating these emissions, with emphasis on the methodological choices that determine whether reported reductions represent robust, transferable climate benefits. The literature was selected from accessible scholarly databases and authoritative institutional sources, with a principal eligibility period from 1 January 2006 to 14 June 2026 and earlier foundational evidence considered when essential. Measurement has progressed from reliance on controlled reference systems towards repeated animal-level monitoring, spectral proxies and facility-scale flux methods. These approaches expand throughput but introduce sampling, calibration and transferability problems that can be substantial when diets, housing or methane inhibitors alter the relationship between a proxy and true emission. Modelling has similarly diversified from inventory emission factors and empirical equations to mechanistic rumen models, whole-farm life-cycle models and data-driven prediction. Increasing complexity does not remove uncertainty; model credibility remains constrained by input quality, external validation, system boundaries and climate metrics. Mitigation evidence is strongest for 3-nitrooxypropanol under housed feeding, while nitrate, dietary lipid strategies, red seaweeds, genetic selection, herd management and manure interventions provide additional but more context-dependent opportunities. Recent grazing trials, long-duration inhibitor studies and farm-economic analyses show that persistence, delivery, animal response and incentive structure are central to real-world efficacy. The review concludes that credible decarbonisation of dairy production depends less on a single technology than on integration of validated measurement, intervention-aware modelling and whole-system accounting that captures cross-gas trade-offs, leakage and production effects. Priority research should therefore connect animal-scale efficacy to multi-year farm-scale verification across diverse production systems.