Climate Change and Agriculture: A Global Perspective.

Much attention has been devoted by the research community to the overarching processes inducing global climate change. It is now time to focus more specifically on how agriculture can contribute to climate change solutions both globally and regionally. These solutions span a broad spectrum including: reversing soil organic matter loss, genetic improvements, enhanced environmental management and soil carbon sequestration. Altogether, the amount of carbon in the world's soils and the vegetation they support exceeds the amount of carbon in the atmosphere approximately three-fold. As human populations continue to increase, the expansion of agriculture has caused the degradation or eradication of native vegetation and contributes a major component of atmospheric carbon-dioxide increase and the consequent exacerbation of global warming. Responding to climate change in developing agricultural regions of the world is particularly important because they are projected to experience the greatest impacts of climate change as well as the greatest rates of population growth, thus threatening food security.