AGRICULTURE

CHAPTER 4
FOOD AND AGRICULTURE
SYSTEMS IN CLIMATE
CHANGE MITIGATION
Having examined in Chapter 3 measures that
build the resilience of smallholders and
vulnerable rural populations to climate change,
we take a broader view of agriculture and food
systems in order to assess their potential
contribution to climate change mitigation. The
agriculture sectors will be called upon to play
their part in mitigation, because they will
generate an increasingly large share of what will
become, hopefully, declining levels of global
emissions, and because they can, under certain
conditions, sequester carbon dioxide.
Agricultural emissions are expected to grow
along with food demand, which is being driven
by population and income growth and associated
changes in diets towards more animal-source
products. Agriculture can contribute to
mitigation by decoupling its production increases
from its emissions increases through reductions
in emission intensity, which is the quantity of
GHGs generated per unit of output. This, in turn,
can be complemented by actions that reduce food
losses and waste and foster changes in food
consumption patterns.
The agriculture sectors, particularly forestry, have
a unique potential to act as carbon sinks by
absorbing CO 2 and sequestering carbon in biomass
and soil. At present, however, deforestation is a
major source of emissions, and unsustainable
farming practices continue to deplete the Earth’s
stock of soil organic carbon. Tapping into the
carbon sequestration potential of forests and
agricultural lands will depend on biophysical
conditions, technical options and policies.
Since agricultural emissions, as well as sinks, are
part of the global carbon (C) and nitrogen (N)
cycles, optimizing agriculture’s mitigation
potential requires first an understanding of these
cycles and how agricultural activities interact with
them. This understanding will permit a fuller
appreciation of the difficulties inherent in
reducing agricultural emissions, which involve
complex biophysical processes and are more
difficult to monitor and control than emissions
from most other anthropogenic sources of
greenhouse gases. Improving the efficiency with
which natural resources are used in agriculture
will be a central element of mitigation strategies.
It is important to recall that in the agriculture
sectors it is impossible to separate the objectives of
food security, adaptation and mitigation, because
there are synergies and trade-offs among them.
Growing experience has shown that integrated
packages of technologies and practices, tailored to
the specific agroecological conditions of
producers, are required to deliver mitigation and
adaptation in a cost-effective manner. •
THE TECHNICAL
POTENTIAL FOR
MITIGATION WITH
ADAPTATION
Agriculture, forestry and land use (AFOLU) are
responsible for about 21 percent of total
greenhouse gas emissions. All carbon dioxide
emissions from AFOLU are attributable to
forestry and land use change, such as
conversion of forests to pasture or crop
production. The bulk of emissions of methane
and nitrous oxide are attributable to agricultural
practices (Table 5). Improved management of
carbon and nitrogen in agriculture, therefore,
will be crucial to its contribution to climate
change mitigation (Box 16). »
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