Emission from cultivated agricultural area covers a series of various emission sources as:
- Direct emission from agricultural soils, which primarily originates from transformation of nitrogen (N) compounds in agricultural fields. The most important emissions sources are related to use of N in inorganic fertilizers, N in animal manure applied to soils and N in crop residues returned to soils. The relevant pollutants are; NH3, N2O, NOx, PM and NMVOC.
- Indirect emission from agricultural soils includes emission from volatilized N as NH3, N2O and NOx and N2O from Nlosses through leaching and run-off.
- Emission from field burning of agricultural residues, which include the pollutants; CH4, N2O, NMVOC, NH3, NOX, PM, carbon monoxide (CO), sulphur dioxide (SO2), black carbon (BC), heavy metals (HM), dioxins, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), hexachlorobenzene (HCB) and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB).
- Emission from use of liming to agricultural soils, use of urea as fertilizers and other carbon containing fertilizers. The relevant pollutants are carbon dioxide (CO2).
- Emission from use of pesticides which includes emission of HCB.
In relation to the Danish total emission, the agricultural sector is noted as important contributes for NH3, TSP, PM10, CH4, N2O and, NMVOC. In 2017 the emission shares were 95 %, 68 %, 27 %, 78 %, 89 % and 38 %, respectively. In 2017 has the total greenhouse gas emission from the agricultural sector been estimated to 10642 kt CO2 equivalents.
