Last week’s climate talks in Copenhagen produced a draft agreement forming an international working group to reduce global warming emissions from the agriculture sector. According to The New York Times Green Inc. blog, the creation of this group reflects the “rising importance of agriculture in the climate change debate.”

The group will aim to mitigate the carbon emissions from crop and livestock cultivation by focusing on technologies, such as agricultural biotechnology, that can strengthen food security in developing nations despite rising temperatures and an increasing population.

You can learn more about the international working group on agriculture here.

Maywa Montenegro writes about the upcoming COP15 Summit in Copenhagen and the need for global leaders to be more mindful of the current tenuous state of global agriculture and the  role biotechnology will play in meeting these challenges.

“Investing in biotechnology laboratories and training biotechnology-capable scientists is a big deal,” says Dr. Nina Fedoroff. “It’s expensive, it needs to be done everywhere, it’s a huge investment. So getting over this distaste for modern science because people don’t realize how long we’ve been changing plants to suit our needs is a really critical step.”

The entire article can be read here.

Please share your thoughts on the current state of global agriculture and the role of biotechnology in helping to address some of these problems.