Agriculture

Our Agriculture Initiative started in 2013, with activities in four focus areas starting in 2014 (enteric, rice, manure, burning).

In 2019 work started to help countries enhance agricultural climate action in their NDCs. > Read about our recent Oct 2019 meeting here

LIVESTOCK ENTERIC FERMENTATION

Making the right choices in major World Bank and GEF investments 

In collaboration with the FAO, World Bank and Global Environment Facility, the initiative is supporting three large national livestock management programmes with more than $460 million in Uruguay, Ethiopia and Bangladesh. The programmes incorporate mitigation options for the livestock sector assessed by the initiative and have the potential to reduce approximately 4 million tonnes of methane per annum. > Read Uruguay's story

To make this case we funded work to show how low-cost strategies to reduce enteric methane emissions can contribute to short- and long-term social and economic development, as well as climate action. This uses the FAO's model "GLEAM."

Readily available practices in livestock feeding and manure management, and better use of technology like biogas generators, could help the sector cut the output of greenhouse gases by up to 30% immediately. So low carbon livestock is not only possible, it’s possible now.

- José Graziano da Silva, former FAO Director-General, at the CCAC 2017 High Level Assembly 

SUSTAINABLE RICE PRODUCTION

Policies and finance, plus training paddy rice farmers, to save water and reduce methane

With IRRI and UNEP, the initiative supports Bangladesh, Colombia, Thailand and Vietnam to encourage uptake of sustainable rice production methods, through policies, access to finance, and training of farmers.

Vietnam is taking decisive steps to achieve a low-carbon rice production as a part of our NDC.

- Chu Van Chuong, Deputy Director-General, Vietnam's Ministry of Agriculture, at the CCAC 2017 High Level Assembly

Our work in Vietnam, for example, is helping with MRV from paddy rice, with GEF support for implementation of the country's NDC -- plus baselines from the work will be used by the World Bank in their sustainable agricultural transformation project in the country.

In Bangladesh we have helped the government set a target to train 50,000 farmers on alternate wetting and drying methods in rice cultivation. > Read Bangaldesh's story

OTHER EXAMPLES

• Manure management practice changes identified for Argentina, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Malawi, Vietnam, and regionally in Central America
• 3 countries - Vietnam, Bangladesh, Colombia - participate in suitability assessments for alternate wetting and drying rice production
• Alternatives to open agricultural burning projects started in India and Peru
• 13 countries developed baseline and mitigation assessments for enteric fermentation in the dairy and livestock sector using the Global Livestock and Environmental Assessment Model (GLEAM)
• Strategic Support Groups created in the Andes and Himalaya countries to help governments and local farmers find alternatives to open burning
• Tools developed for Vietnam to measure, report, and verify greenhouse gas emissions from paddy rice, and support NDC implementation in the rice sector