The Rockefeller Foundation has announced grants totaling more than $1.5 million to support the development of climate-smart agriculture initiatives that sustainably increase agricultural productivity in developing countries while reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

Agriculture is a significant contributor to global GHG emissions; according to some estimates, it accounts, in combination with forestry and other land uses, for at least 30 percent of such emissions. At the same time, it has the potential to mitigate climate change through long-term carbon storage in soils and biomass as well as the reduction of nitrous oxide and methane emissions.

Announced this week at the Global Conference on Food Security, Agriculture, and Climate Change at the Hague in the Netherlands, the grants include initial funding to D.C.-based Forest Trends for the launch of an African Agricultural Climate Finance Facility that will develop and test new transaction models leading to greater investment in smallholder farmer-driven agricultural mitigation and adaptation projects.

The foundation also awarded a grant to the Rainforest Alliance to support the development of criteria for low-carbon farming techniques as part of its Sustainable Agriculture Standard. And it announced its support for the ongoing work of the Nature Conservation Research Centre of Ghana, which works to help smallholder cocoa farmers produce shade-grown cocoa, a traditional growing method that supports greater long-term productivity, sequesters more carbon, and should lead to a higher price.