NEIL D. HAMILTON is a professor of law and director of the Agricultural
Law Center at Drake University. Contact: [log in to unmask] •
December 16, 2009 
On Monday afternoon, Dec. 14, three days of outside meetings in
Copenhagen came to a head in an official COP 15 side event, "Beyond
Copenhagen: Agriculture and Forestry are Part of the Solution." More than
400 people crowded the Niels Bohr room in Hall H at the Bella Center for
a meeting organized by the International Federation of Agricultural
Producers (IFAP).

The main message was food security and climate change are inexorably
linked, and any agreement coming out of Copenhagen that does not address
the role of agriculture will not succeed. The meeting began with an
opening statement by Ajay Vashee, from Zambia, president of IFAP, who
urged the negotiating parties to include agriculture in the text of the
agreement. His remarks were followed by representatives of the FAO
(United Nations Food and Agriculture Organzation), the CGIAR
(Consultative Group on International Agriculture Research), and by M.S.
Swaminathan, the famous India plant breeder familiar to Iowans as a World
Food Prize winner. The message from all the speakers was the same - food
security, poverty reduction and climate change are interlinked - and
agriculture and forestry play major roles in the climate change debate
both in adaptation and in mitigation.
Many speakers picked up a theme being forwarded on buttons handed out by
African delegations: "No agriculture - no deal." Only time will tell if
the negotiators are listening and agriculture is included in the final
text.

The link between climate change and food security was the theme of
remarks U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack made as keynote speaker
Saturday at the Agriculture and Rural Development Day. It took place at
the University of Copenhagen College of Life Sciences and was organized
by a consortium of international agricultural research organizations, aid
donors and institutions promoting agriculture. The day brought together
over 350 national representatives, farmers, government officials and
academics to consider the impact of climate change on agriculture.
Roundtable discussions were held on themes such as the triple challenge
to agriculture of increasing food productivity, climate resilience and
greenhouse gas mitigation, and on unlocking the potential of emission
markets for small farmers.

Vilsack gave an address and impressed the audience with his understanding
of the impact climate change is having on agriculture - and the need to
address climate change if we are serious about food security and poverty
reduction.
He spoke about what he refers to as the Borlaug principles to evaluate
our efforts - scope, scale and impact - to ensure our efforts are
designed to meet the magnitude of the challenges we face. The secretary,
Christie Vilsack and his staff stayed to participate in several of the
"idea marketplace" discussions that followed.
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