THE TWIN battles to improve food security for a growing world population and containing climate change can be fought on the same front: the world's farmland.
That's the view the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in a new report released today.
Agriculture not only suffers the impacts of climate change, it is also responsible for 14pc of global greenhouse gas emissions, FAO says.
However, agriculture has the potential to be an important part of the solution, through reducing and/or removing a significant amount of global emissions.
FAO points out that 70pc of this mitigation potential could be realised in developing countries.
The report, Food Security and Agricultural Mitigation in Developing Countries: Options for Capturing Synergies was launched during the Barcelona Climate Change Talks.
"Many effective strategies for climate change mitigation from agriculture also benefit food security, development and adaptation to climate change," FAO assistant director-general Alexander Muller says.
"The challenge is to capture these potential synergies, while managing trade-offs that may have negative impacts on food security."