The ICTSD-IPC Platform on Climate Change, Agriculture and Trade has published two new papers highlighting climate change mitigation strategies in agriculture.

Agricultural Technologies for Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation in Developing Countries: Policy Options for Innovation and Technology Diffusion

This report highlights the technological and institutional innovations required to meet the challenges of food security, agricultural development and climate change adaptation and mitigation. Whilst new traits and varieties of crops are noted as important innovations, the paper puts equal emphasis on the need for relevant practice and technologies such as water management, post-harvest technologies, information services and forecasting, and farmer insurance.

The paper also explores the constraints to the development of innovations and their transfer and dissemination to farmers, and suggests ways to overcome such constraints. Those most significant barriers are named as poorly functioning input or output markets, weak local institutions and infrastructure, inadequate extension systems, and absent credit and insurance markets.

The authors propose six policy principles to aid farmers’ access to new technologies, which prioritise a globally-connected yet locally-relevant approach to climate change mitigation strategies.

Climate Change and China’s Agricultural Sector: An Overview of Impacts, Adaptation and Mitigation

This paper examines the challenges facing China: economic development, eliminating poverty, ensuring long-term food security, adapting to climate change and mitigating the effects of greenhouse gas emissions. The report notes that Chinese farmers have been making progress in implementing adaptation strategies, which include changing cropping patterns, increasing investment in irrigation infrastructure, using water saving technologies and planting new crop varieties that are resistant to the effects of climate change.

The Chinese government have also been investing in important mitigation activities. The paper reports on a new technology that the government is promoting, that regulates fertilizer dosage according to soil type, to combat an overuse of fertilizer by many farmers. Additionally, the government is urging farmers to practice conservation tillage as a means to create carbon sinks.