Promoting rice-upland crops systems to mitigate direct greenhouse gas emissions from intensive rice-based agriculture globally

Maximizing the rice-based cropping intensity supports food security but causes substantial methane (CH ₄ ) and nitrous oxide (N ₂ O) emissions. Here, we project the spatiotemporal variations of their emissions from global rice-based ecosystems and assess the impacts of alternative cropping pattern pathways using a process-based model. Converting double-rice to rice-upland crops (DTRU) reduce global rice-based greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) by ~ 28—32% relative to conventional (CONV) and by ~ 47—52% relative to shifts from single to double-rice (STDR) pathways. This implementation also dampens the emissions amplified by climate changes. Targeted expansion of rice-upland crop systems (TERU) partially restores rice production from DTRU with limited additional GHGs. Moreover, paired with carbon pricing, it yields lower increases in effective rice prices than other pathways. We quantitively demonstrates that selected structural shifts in rice-based cropping patterns would deliver robust and scalable GHG mitigations while preserving social welfare, offering a promising solution for global agricultural sustainability.