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Overview

Meeting the challenges of food security and climate change

The Climate Change Act (2008) commits the UK to 80% statutory greenhouse gases emissions reduction by 2050 across all sectors of the economy. Farming and land use are responsible for about 7.4% of total UK emissions. Delivering the expectation that we should gain the increases in food production required from a growing population, while reducing agricultural emissions and adapting to climate change presents a unique scientific challenge this meeting proposes to explore. The meeting will also strive to reconcile the need to increase food production with the inevitable pressure on GHG emissions, at the same time as achieving a balance through land management and displacing fossil fuels with bioenergy feedstocks while enhancing carbon capture and sequestration.

Biographies and audio recordings are available below.

Download the post-meeting report, produced by the organising group.

This meeting was supported by Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs; Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board; Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council; Biosciences Knowledge Transfer Network; Environmental Sustainability Knowledge Transfer Network; Living With Environmental Change; National Farmers Union; Natural Environment Research Council; Technology Strategy Board.

Organisers

Schedule