24 percent of the land degradation is attributed to poor agricultural practices. Table 8 gives a breakdown by country. Dominated by the Russian Federation, the scale of land degraded by agricultural practices is remarkable, with an estimated 100 million hectares in Russia and another 11 million hectares in the relatively small country of Romania. The problem is endemic for the region as a whole, as Map 3 illustrates.

A better-scaled measure looks at degraded land relative to land that is currently used for agricultural purposes plus land that could be potentially brought into agricultural uses. This number is reported in the far-right column of table 8. Not all land is equally well suited for agriculture, so the number is a rough one. Still, it is clear that there are significant differences among countries as to how poor agricultural practices threaten agricultural productivity. In some countries, including Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, degraded land area far exceeds the area that is currently suitable for agriculture.

# _Improved agronomy_

As detailed in the IPCC report, the adoption of new technologies can provide direct and indirect mitigation benefits. For example, better agronomy and better resource management can result in greater accumulations of soil carbon. There are likely positive spillovers as well, or reverse leakages in mitigation parlance, that occur when individuals, motivated by better profits, adopt farming methods that boost land productivity. For example, using improved seeds and inputs are expected to slow or reverse the conversion of land from forests and pastures to cropland.

In general, this is what is currently happening in ECA. Since the early 1990s, productivity gains have been significant in many countries. Table 9 reports cereal grain yields in the region, and reports yields in Argentina, Canada, China, and Colombia for comparison. With the continued adoption of new seeds and farming practices, yields in the region have improved substantially and, for some countries, now rival yields found among the most advanced agricultural sectors. As with other aspects of the region, the gains have been uneven, with smaller increases in the Central Asian countries. Figure 11 reports the average percentage change in cereal yields and production based on three-year average yields centered on 1993 and 2008. Despite differences, the figure shows that yield gains exceeded production gains in most of the ECA countries. Only in the cases of Tajikistan and Turkmenistan has area expansion largely driven production growth.

As discussed later, a key determinant of yield growth and productivity growth in general is adaptive research that modifies crop characteristics to local conditions. Although this type of research is rarely motivated by climate policy, the spillover effects of research that leads to improved agronomy can be considerable for mitigation and for improving adaptation capacity.

# _Livestock grazing and waste_

There are two primary links between climate change and livestock production. The first link has to do with how pasture lands are used. In cases where land property rights are weak and animal husbandry practices are poor, lands can be over grazed, leading to degradation, erosion and the depletion of the carbon stored in plants and the soil. Grazing animals are also a source of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas; however in well managed pastures; however, the manure from grazing animals adds organic material to soils, facilitating sequestration and partly offsetting the negative effects of released methane on the climate. In the last decades, the relationship between livestock production and land-use has changed significantly in the region. Figure 12 shows how land has shifted out of crop production and into pasture and grazing lands. This is consistent with improved production technologies that are land preserving discussed in the previous section. This has also been accompanied by a decline in livestock herd size – as measured in animal units. As an aside, animal units are a way of standardizing the environmental impact of animals on land. The coefficients adopted here are those used by state agencies in the United States, based on recommendations of the US environmental 8