India, Aug. 17 -- The International Panel on Climate Change 's (IPCC) latest report, released earlier this month and stating that the process of producing and making food available accounts annually for a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions, requires serious attention. The second in the series of the organisation's specially-focussed reports and entitled Climate Change and Land , the validity of its observations is hardly in doubt.

Agriculture cuts both ways. As the report says, it accounts for 37 per cent of all greenhouse gas emissions if one takes into account both the percentage generated by global food production and activities like transportation and the work of energy and food processing industries. On its part, climate cha...