The Global Donor Platform on Rural Development produced the sixth issues paper on agriculture and its possible role in the Copenhagen Negotiations in September 2009. This one summarises the outcomes of the UNFCCC informal Bonn meeting in August 2009, and analyses the latest negotiating texts.

A new survey released by Farming Futures - an industry-led project that helps farmers respond to climate change - reveals that one in four farmers have noticed increased interest from customers in their environmental performance over the past year. 53% of those surveyed recognise that addressing climate change offers potential business opportunities - a significant rise on 2009 - and the number of farmers producing their own energy has doubled.

The EU Midair study has examined region and system specific, cost-effective GHG mitigation measures and strategies for organic and conventional dairy production in Europe. A key conclusion of this study is that farm-level GHG emissions are strongly related to the N surplus of the production, irrespective of whether farm management is organic or conventional. NB: The Midair project is now finished.

In early 2008 Warwick HRI produced a report for Defra entitled Direct energy use in agriculture: opportunities for reducing fossil fuel inputs. (This is a pay service from Defra.)

This paper, submitted by the Food and Agriculture Organisation to the UNFCCC Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative action, highlights ways in which the potential of agricultural mitigation in general, and from smallholder agriculture in particular, may be realized under a future global climate change agreement.

Defra has published a new review of the potential for reduced tillage practices and organic matter returns to increase the carbon content of English and Welsh arable soils as a means of mitigating greenhouse gas emissions.

This report, published by Greenpeace International was written by researchers from the University of Aberdeen. It puts agriculture’s global contribution to GHG emissions at 17 and 32% of all human-induced GHG emissions, including land use changes. However, it also says that agriculture has a significant climate change mitigation potential, which could change the position of agriculture from the second largest emitter to a much smaller emitter or even a net sink. Mitigation options fall into the following categories: Cropland management Grazing management

Defra's Biomass Task Force Report to Government notes that biomass (fuel from forestry, energy crops and waste) could reduce the nation's carbon emissions by almost three million tonnes a year if used to provide heating. Heat generation accounts for 40 per cent of our national energy consumption. The carbon saving would be the equivalent of taking 3.25 million cars off the road. The report estimates that there could be 20 million tonnes of biomass available annually.