The Round Table on Organic Agriculture and Climate Change (RTOACC) is a newly launched initiative dedicated to increasing understanding and quantifying the role that organic agriculture can play in climate change mitigation and adaptation – in addition to its already understood contribution in areas such as reducing use of chemical pesticides and biodiversity conservation. Established at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December 2009 and supported by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), RTOACC participants spent their first year engaged in activities such as quantifying the climate benefits of organic farming which can be used for building up carbon-offset methodologies approved for international emission, and developing and improving life cycle assessment (LCA) tools for a better integration of organic farming techniques. ix organic agriculture and climate change mitigation a re port of the round tab le on organic agriculture and climate change This is not to say that there is a dearth of knowledge on the role of organic agriculture in mitigating climate change. The fact that organic farmers replace synthetic fertilizers with biomass management results not only in enhanced soil fertility, but also increased soil carbon sequestration. What RTOACC can contribute, through its multi-stakeholder platform, is setting base values so that all future investigation, methodology development and quantification work moves ahead from the same point. RTOACC participants use these base values as a point from which to identify what data is available and what data is missing, to identify current or develop new methodologies that can fill the data gaps, and then to use the new complete data to quantify the mitigation potential of organic agriculture. It is well known that there have been no relevant studies on soil carbon stocks in Africa or South America so further investigation will be required in order to access and incorporate reliable data from those areas. This information not only can enhance climate change mitigation activities which will have broad benefits, it also can provide the data to verify the mitigation benefits of organic agriculture which will allow organic farmers to increase their participation in carbon markets. Looking to the future, RTOACC is committed to making a concerted effort to disseminate its findings to and through a variety of communication networks. For example, results will be sent to scientific publications to build a broad peer-reviewed knowledge stock that can be taken into account by the IPCC and other relevant scientific institutions; to national GHG inventories to develop management-specific information for their agricultural segments; and to data bases to share the knowledge of specific inputs and techniques of organic agriculture. In addition, RTOACC can share its newly improved or developed methodologies to appropriate entities to facilitate approval of organic practices for the regulated and non-regulated carbon markets. Looking at the progress made in its first months of operation, RTOACC can look back at a time of fruitful activities and be proud of what its participants have achieved.