//  A challenge and opportunity

Agricultural production needs to increase by 70 percent to meet the food needs of nine billion people by 2050; additional pressures on the sector include rising demand for renewable fibres and fuels. Gains in food and crop productivity will need to be attained in the context of a warmer climate and variable weather patterns, which are already threatening farmers’ yields.

Agriculture is also a major emitter of greenhouse gases. Contributing about 13.5 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, agriculture’s carbon footprint is equivalent to that of global transportation. Combined with emissions from deforestation, much of which is driven by the need to open new lands for agricultural use, the figure rises to 30 percent – a higher emissions rate than for electricity and heating combined.

The negative impacts of climate change fall disproportionately on the world’s poorest people, most of which depend on agriculture for their livelihoods and inhabit regions of the world most threatened by climate change.

//  Achieving the triple wins

Climate-smart agricultural practices can contribute to food security by improving agriculture’s resilience to a harsher climate, reducing its overall greenhouse gas emissions and supporting the livelihoods of the world’s poorest people.

Meeting this challenge requires major investments to support farmers’ mitigation and adaptation efforts, and into the research and development of crop varieties and techniques needed to maximise agriculture’s climate change impact.

Regognising agriculture as part both of the challenge and the solution, the Platform Working Group on Agriculture and Climate Change helps coordinate development partners’ efforts to advance the triple wins of climate-smart agriculture.

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