“There was always opposition – and we couldn’t understand why,” said Castro, now assistant director-general at the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). In the early years, the climate negotiations focused on reducing emissions from the energy sector – the largest emitter – while the relationship between agriculture and climate change was not fully understood. At November’s climate talks in Bonn, the stalemate was finally broken, with nations agreeing to move forward on issues related to agriculture and climate change. Andy Jarvis, research director at the Colombia-based International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), describes the relationship between climate and agriculture as an “unhappy marriage”. In Brazil, a major beef exporter, state agricultural research agency Embrapa is testing this practice, he added.

Source: The Express Tribune December 28, 2017 08:26 UTC