The US pledged $90 million to a new research initiative to address climate change and food security through agriculture.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack on Wednesday joined representatives from 20 other countries at the Copenhagen climate talks to announce the formation of the Global Research Alliance (GRA) on Agricultural Greenhouse Gases.
Over the next four years, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) will expand agricultural climate change mitigation research by $90 million and contribute this research to the GRA. The increase will raise USDA’s agricultural climate change mitigation research portfolio to over $130 million over the next four years, up from a base level of funding of just over $10 million in FY 2009.
USDA will support the participation of developing countries in the GRA through the Borlaug Fellowship program granting Borlaug Fellowships to researchers from Alliance member developing countries so that they can work side-by-side with US scientists on climate change mitigation research.
The GRA will focus on research, development, and extension of technologies and practices to grow more food (and more climate-resilient food systems) without growing greenhouse gas emissions.
Anticipated products of the worldwide scientific collaboration include cost-effective and accurate ways of measuring greenhouse gas emissions and carbon stored in soil; new farming practices that reduce emissions and increase carbon storage in farmland in different countries; and farming methods that sustain yields while helping to mitigate climate change.
The countries which have agreed to participate in the GRA thus far include Australia, Canada, Columbia, Chile, Denmark, France, Germany, Ghana, India, Ireland, Japan, Malaysia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay, and Vietnam.
"Just as climate change has no borders, our research should not," said Vilsack. "No single nation has all of the resources needed to tackle agricultural greenhouse gas emissions while at the same time enhancing food production and food security."
Agriculture currently produces 14% of global annual greenhouse gas emissions. In the coming decades, agriculture will be faced with the twin challenges of not only reducing its contribution to greenhouse gas emissions but meeting a dramatic increase in global food demand.
Over the last half-century, research on agricultural production and energy efficiency in the United States has cut in half the energy used per unit of agricultural output helping to reduce the greenhouse gas intensity of agriculture, USDA said in a release.
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