The purpose of the paper is to identify how climate change affects how people should approach the process of transforming agricultural systems (including crops, livestock, fisheries and forestry) to support global food security and poverty reduction in a sustainable way. Five major categories of responses are identified within agricultural transitions that can be taken to respond to climate change: 1) increasing the resilience of production systems, 2) diversification, 3) expanding the use of no regrets technologies and planning, 4) better use of information for risk management, and 5) utilizing the co-benefits from mitigation.