As world leaders head to Copenhagen next month, back home we are left to consider how climate change is affecting our ability to grow food and feed the world.

Legislators may still be thrashing out the form of an Emissions Trading Scheme, but the harder thinking must now focus on the longer-term collision between climate change and agriculture and what this means for global food security.

And it is some collision. There is much agreement climate change will hit agricultural productivity in a number of ways: through higher temperatures; longer droughts; more intense bushfires; less water; more extreme weather and the resulting spread of biosecurity threats.

In fact, there is modeling that suggests climate change will see global agricultural production fall 16 per cent by 2020 at a time when we need to be producing more, not less.

Take a look at figures from the United Nations’s Food and Agriculture Organisation which say the number of hungry people will grow by 105 million over 2009. This increase will see an unenviable milestone – 1 billion malnourished – around one-sixth of the world’s population.

These are figures that must give policy makers in Australia and overseas cause to reflect, not just on the anxiety families in developing nations face daily putting food on the table, but also the wider challenge of feeding an extra 2.3 billion people who will inhabit our planet by 2050.

It is a challenge however, that Australia is well placed to help meet.

That is because we are one of the world’s largest agricultural export nations with more than two-thirds of production sent abroad, which in 2006-07 generated $27.8 billion.

We have achieved this position not due to our natural agricultural resources but because of the investments made in the past, sometimes up to 30 years ago, in agricultural research, development and extension.

This research has delivered new technologies to our farmers who have a proven record of innovation and adaptation to volatile international markets and Australia’s variable climate.

Here are some examples: in 2009, application of modern farming technology will see Australian grain growers harvest around 23 million tonnes of wheat, around 75 per cent of which will flow into export markets.

In fact, export grain from Australia’s 2009 harvest will be enough to supply the recommended daily wholegrain intake of around 984 million people for the 12 months ahead .  In line with this is the fact that our cropping enterprises have achieved 2.8 per cent year-on-year productivity improvement over the last 20 years.

The breakthroughs are never front-page news but they all contribute to our industry and often have implications for world food supply, for example, the research into no-till farming which improved soil moisture retention and meant wheat could be grown in areas of lower rainfall, increasing volumes and productivity.

Results like these are due to a history of government and industry commitment to rural R&D. Over the past 20 years a significant block of these commitments have been formalised in a unique R&D model—the Rural Research and Development Corporations based on industry levies and government funding, which last year was worth about $540 million.

There are 16 RDC and they conduct research across every part of Australian primary industry and have delivered substantial benefits to Australian agriculture and to the wider community. In fact, a wide-ranging evaluation last year of RDC economic performance found that every $1 spent delivered $11 in benefits to industry and to the wider community.

And for several years, the RDCs have been playing their part in tackling climate change. The Climate Change Strategy for Primary Industries is a national partnership between Australian science, farming and research groups to identify collaborative research opportunities over the long-term that help farmers manage the downsides of climate change while maximising any upsides that come along.

Collaboration is the bedrock of our model of rural R&D, that is, a partnership between industry and government, and I believe such a system puts us in the best position to confront the policy challenges of the future and then take Australian agriculture forward over the next two decades.

Enzo Allara is the Chairman of the Council of Rural Research & Development Corporation Chairs.