Introduction - Climate Resilient Agriculture for Ensuring Food Security - page 14

• Adapted livestock and pasture management,
including rematching stocking rates and tim-
ing with pasture production, new varieties and
species of forage and livestock, updated fertil-
izer applications, and using supplementary
feeds and concentrates
• Improved management of pests, diseases, and
weeds, for example, through integrated pest
management, new crop and livestock variet-
ies, improved quarantine, and sentinel moni-
toring programs
• Better use of short-term and seasonal climate
forecasting to reduce production risk

term structural and management changes, and
animal breeding
• Manure management, including improved
storage and handling, anaerobic digestion, and
more effi cient use as a nutrient source
• Bioenergy, including energy crops (solid, liq-
uid, biogas, and residues)
The potential for synergies among these land-
based agricultural mitigation actions that promote
food security is particularly high for specifi c prac-
tices such as adopting improved crop varieties
(e.g., with higher water-use effi ciency), breeding
livestock to increase sustainable productivity of
meat or milk, avoiding bare fallow land and
changing crop rotations to incorporate food-
producing cover crops and legumes, adopting pre-
cision fertilizer management, improving forage
quality and quantity on pastures, expanding
energy-effi cient irrigation and water conservation
techniques (e.g., in rice systems), and implement-
ing agro-forestry that does not take signifi cant
amounts of land out of food production.
Technical options for mitigation in agriculture
need to be locally appropriate. For example,
although land management presents the major
opportunity for mitigation in the agricultural sec-
tor globally, other interventions, such as improved
livestock breeding and feeding, or manure man-
agement, may be more effective for particular
countries, farming systems, or agroecological
zones.

1.7 Climate Change Mitigation

Climate change mitigation refers to actions that
aim to reduce the amount of climate change, typi-
cally by limiting the future increases in concen-
trations of greenhouse gases in the
atmosphere - either by reducing emissions from
a wide range of our industrial and agricultural
activities or by increasing the amount of CO 2
taken up and stored in natural “sinks” such as for-
ests and soils. Actions that reduce greenhouse
gas emissions in many cases also improve our
preparedness for future climate change.
Smith et al. ( 2007 ) distinguish seven broad
sets of options for mitigating GHG emissions
from agricultural ecosystems:
• Cropland management, including nutrient
management, tillage and residue management,
water management (irrigation, drainage), rice
paddy management, agro-forestry, set-asides,
crop rotations, and land-use change
• Grazing land management and pasture
improvement, including grazing intensity,
increased productivity (e.g., fertilization),
nutrient management, fi re management, and
species introduction (including legumes)
• Management of organic soils, including avoid-
ing drainage of wetlands
• Restoration of degraded lands, including ero-
sion control, organic amendments, and nutri-
ent amendments
• Livestock management, including improved
feeding practices, dietary additives, longer-

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