Higher Levels of No-Till Agriculture Associated with Lower PM2.5 in the Corn Belt

No-till approaches to agricultural soil management have been encouraged as a means of reducingsoil erosion, reducing water pollution, and increasing carbon sequestration. An understudied additional benefit ofno-till approaches may be improvements in local air quality due to reductions in both machinery use and dust emissions.This paper leverages recent advances in remote sensing and air pollution modeling to examine this question at alandscape scale. Combining data on daily fine particulate matter levels with satellite measures of no-till uptakesince 2005, the paper shows a strong association between increasing adoption of no-till agricultural practices andreductions in county average fine particulate matter pollution over more than 28 million hectares of cropland inthe U.S. Corn Belt. The reduction in local pollution implies substantial monetary benefits from reductions in mortalitythat are roughly one-fourth as large as the carbon benefits. The benefits of mortality reductions are also, bythemselves, nearly equal to the current monetary costs of subsidizing no-till practices.