A growing number of farmers are making the connection between more frequent, extreme weather events and the climate crisis.

Last year, OEFFA, as a member of the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC), began circulating a letter written by and for farmers: the Farmer and Rancher Letter on Climate Change and Agriculture. The letter expresses deep concerns about climate change impacts on U.S. agriculture and calls for solutions that invest in rural and agricultural communities.

As a result, more than 150 OEFFA farmers joined thousands more farmers from across the nation in a clarion call for investments in sustainable agriculture.

Agriculture is on the Front Line of the Climate Crisis

Agriculture is on the front lines of a changing climate with greater weather extremes, like flooding, drought, and heat waves, threatening workers, crops, and livestock. As temperatures continue to rise, new pest and disease pressures are impacting crop yields and quality. Farmers and ranchers are accustomed to adapting to change, but today’s weather extremes are unprecedented and threaten the future of farming.

Agriculture can be part of the solution to the climate crisis through increased investments in existing conservation practices and farm programs that make agriculture and rural communities more resilient. Good soil health practices like cover crops, crop rotation, improved grazing management, and reduced tillage can sequester much of the carbon contributing to climate change. These practices also help ensure farmers adapt to weather extremes by increasing the water holding capacity and water infiltration rates of the soil needed when there is a drought or flood. Sustainable and organic farmers reduce potent greenhouse gasses, like nitrous oxide, by reducing or eliminating the use of synthetic fertilizers.

Agricultural Resilience Act

Large-scale adoption of these practices will require significant investment to reduce the risk to producers as they shift to new climate-friendly practices. Technical assistance, financial incentives, and research are also key and are currently being advanced through H.R. 6851, the Agricultural Resilience Act (ARA).

The ARA offers a comprehensive set of farmer-driven solutions to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions in U.S. agriculture by 2040 by setting a national goal and investing in research, soil health, farmland preservation, farm viability, pasture-based livestock, on -farm renewable energy, and reducing food loss and waste.

The only Ohio member of the U.S. House of Representative currently supporting the ARA is Congressman Tim Ryan (D-13). Contact OEFFA for information on your member of Congress and their position on this issue.

Farmers Share Stories with House Select Committee, Senator Brown

NSAC shared the Farmer and Rancher Letter on Climate Change and Agriculture to the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis on August 27. Signatories of the letter shared stories of how climate change affected their lives and spoke of their commitment to be part of the climate solution. They urged legislators to continue their work in Congress to support programs and increase conservation incentives to help others implement climate stewardship practices on their operations.

Following the delivery of the letter to these Congressional climate leaders, a handful of OEFFA farmers shared their climate concerns with Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH), who serves on the Senate Agriculture Committee. Chelsea Gandy and Jesse Rickard of Fox Hollow Farm, Mardy Townsend of Marshy Meadows Farm, Betsy Libby of Blackbird Meadows Farm, and Lauren Ketcham of Down the Road Farm joined OEFFA Policy Director, Amalie Lipstreu, Senator Brown, and two of his staffers, Jonathan McCracken and Ross Griffin, to talk about how climate is affecting their farm businesses.

While climate change may not be the term used by many farmers, the conversation made clear that most farmers in Ohio are experiencing extreme and damaging weather beyond the normal fluctuations faced over the decades. Even more pressing is the cost of these weather fluctuations on the farm business. Whether it is having one less cutting of hay, having to buy shorter season corn, or losing vegetable crops or livestock to extreme heat, these changes are real and affect the viability of farm businesses.

Be the Change

Thank you to our OEFFA farm leaders for speaking up to move our members of Congress to action on issues that affect farmers and food systems across the globe. If you are a farmer experiencing unprecedented weather impacts on your farm business, let us know. Even if you don’t farm, but feel this is an important issue, contact us today. We need your voice, more than ever.

This blog is from the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC), written June 30 following the release of the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis report and provides detailed analysis and resources on the recommendations in the report related to agriculture and related programs and legislation.

Major comprehensive federal legislation to deal with the global climate crisis is long overdue.  While no bills are likely to become law this year, the time is ripe for piecing together the key components of a new law for consideration in the 117^th Congress (2021-22).  Even before next year, the House of Representatives will engage in a trial run, voting on climate-related bills yet this year, though with the knowledge the bills are unlikely to be considered in the Senate or become law.

While transportation, energy, and economic development generally get top billing in climate legislative discussions, food and agriculture has a major role to play in addressing climate disruption, as NSAC has stated in our Climate and Agriculture position paper, a farmer sign-on letter that is making the rounds, and in a new NSAC blog series on the Agriculture Resilience Act (HR 5861).

Farmers are on the front lines of climate disruption and can play a substantial role in providing climate solutions. From a farmer perspective, it is worth celebrating the inclusion of an agriculture chapter in the long-awaited action plan (one-pager of full report) of the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis that was released today.  Chaired by Representative Kathy Castor (D-FL), the Select Committee was empaneled back in February 2019 to pull together this national plan of action.

The Select Committee’s action plan lays out the steps Congress needs to take to put the country on a path to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The roadmap would kick start economic recovery by investing in clean energy and jobs that value workers. The report centers around 12 key pillars, including investing in clean energy infrastructure, transforming domestic manufacturing of clean energy technology, investing in workers and a fair economy, advancing environmental justice, protecting and restoring U.S. natural resources, and promoting climate-resilient agriculture.

The release of the Select Committee’s report was originally scheduled for late March but was delayed by the novel coronavirus pandemic. It is intended to serve as a template for eventual comprehensive legislation.

NSAC released a press comment on the report earlier today.

Agriculture Recommendations

The agriculture section of the Select Committee’s report includes seven major components – increasing carbon sequestration and resilience, decreasing agricultural greenhouse gas emissions, improving technical assistance and research, supporting on-farm renewable energy and energy efficiency, supporting the next generation of farmers, preserving farmland, and reducing food waste.

These topic headings line up very well with the Agriculture Resilience Act (ARA) introduced earlier this year by Representative Chellie Pingree (D-ME) and endorsed by NSAC.  In fact, the new report makes repeated references to the ARA legislation, a bill which puts into detailed legislative language many of the recommendations highlighted by the Select Committee.  When it comes time for the Agriculture Committees of Congress to write their sections of comprehensive climate legislation or the climate-relevant sections of the next federal farm bill, the ARA will serve as a model to work from and further develop.

Highlights from among the scores of Select Committee agriculture recommendations follow.  Provisions included in the ARA are denoted by an asterisk (*).

1. Increase Agricultural Carbon Sequestration and Resilience Through Climate Stewardship Practices

By providing financial and technical assistance for conservation tillage, cover crops, rotational grazing, resource-conserving crop rotations, perennials, advanced nutrient management, and agroforestry, Congress can help America’s farmers and ranchers implement climate stewardship practices while increasing profitability and making their farms more resilient to the impacts of climate change. Specific recommendations include:

• Greatly increase funding for working lands conservation programs, including the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP), the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), and the Regional Conservation Partnership Program (RCPP), adding climate adaptation and mitigation to each program’s purposes. *
• Restore automatic renewals under CSP to allow for continual improvement in farmers’ carbon sequestration efforts. *
• Direct the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) to establish region-specific climate change mitigation bundles within CSP that include both soil health and emissions reduction practices.
• Increase funding for On-Farm Conservation Innovation Trials, including Soil Health Demonstrations.*
• Increase conservation funding set asides for beginning and socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers. *
• Increase acreage enrolled in the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) and the Agricultural Conservation Easement Program (ACEP) and administer the programs with an emphasis on climate benefits. *
• Require ACEP participants to complete and maintain a conservation plan, including climate benefits, with the option of automatic enrollment in conservation working lands programs. *
• Direct the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to target CRP and ACEP to areas at risk of conversion to non-agricultural uses as well as flood-prone lands, peatlands, or other areas where climate benefits are substantial.
• Create regional agroforestry centers to support silvopasture, alley cropping, and other excellent agroforestry systems to increase carbon sequestration and improve production. *
• Set national climate stewardship practice goals and direct USDA to update these goals at least every four years to restore and maximize soil carbon in working lands. *
• Improve conservation compliance enforcement and make ‘sodsaver rules’ apply nationwide. *
• Encourage cooperative agreements and data sharing between farmers and federal, state, and local agencies, land grant universities, nonprofits, agricultural retailers, and conservation organizations to coordinate and support the implementation of measuring, quantifying, evaluating, and reporting levels of carbon sequestration and greenhouse gas emission reductions on farms.
• Study the feasibility of developing a federal tax credit to incentivize carbon sequestration and abatement on farms. *
• Create a national organic agriculture transition program, including farmer-to-farmer mentorship opportunities, financial and technical assistance, and initiatives for beginning and socially disadvantaged farmers.
• Establish a state soil health grant program to provide states and tribes with funding for soil carbon sequestration programs. *
• Establish a new mechanism such as a “climate-based producer” certification to provide markets and incentives for improved climate stewardship, including auditing and certification services through USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service.
• Direct USDA to align conservation practices between NRCS programs and crop insurance programs and provide crop insurance premium discounts for farmers who use risk-reducing, climate-friendly farming practices. *
• Increase outreach and incentives for Whole Farm Revenue Protection insurance to encourage diversification.

2.   Reduce Agricultural Emissions

Climate stewardship farming practices, including improved nutrient management and rotational grazing, can help reduce the nearly 10 percent of U.S. emissions that stem from agriculture.  Specific recommendations include:

• Increase financial incentives to improve nutrient management through EQIP, RCPP, and CSP.
• Expand research, development, and deployment of precision agriculture technologies to apply fertilizer more efficiently and invest in rural broadband to support these technologies.
• Provide technical and financial assistance for farmers to adopt alternatives to synthetic fertilizer, such as crop rotation, cover cropping, and the use of non-synthetic fertilizers such as compost.
• Create an alternative manure management program to provide grants to farmers for non-digester manure and methane management strategies to reduce emissions, including conversion of non-pasture dairy and livestock operations to pasture-based management and alternative manure treatment and storage practices. *
• Provide funding for the Grazing Lands Conservation Initiative and amend the program purpose to add soil health and grazing system resilience. *
• Provide support for producers transitioning from confinement and feedlot systems or continuous grazing to managed grazing-based systems and require a significant portion of EQIP funding spent on livestock go toward climate-smart grazing systems. *
• Increase research and development to examine different feeds and feed additives and their impact on methane emissions from enteric fermentation.

3.  Increase Federal Capacity to Provide Technical Assistance to Farmers

USDA, land grant universities and extension, and non-governmental organizations (NGO) and retailers should collaborate to provide farmers and ranchers with technical assistance to increase adoption of climate stewardship practices.  Specific recommendations include:

• Significantly increase support for the NRCS Conservation Technical Assistance program and increase technical assistance to farmers and ranchers to mitigate and adapt to climate change as well as research and deployment of agricultural climate solutions. *
• Support public-private partnerships to facilitate adoption of climate stewardship practices.
• Prioritize climate-specific research within competitive grant research programs. *
• Authorize the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) Long-Term Agroecological Research (LTAR) Network and make climate research a priority. *
• Facilitate farmer-to-farmer education and outreach programs on climate practices. *
• Authorize and increase funding and staffing for the regional USDA Climate Hubs. *
• Increase funding to develop seeds, trees, and animal breeds adapted to climate change, accounting for regional differences, and establish a USDA Public Breed and Cultivar Research Activities Coordinator. *

4. Support On-Farm Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency

Farmers can reduce emissions, reduce costs, and earn more through energy efficiency improvements and the production of on-farm renewable energy.  Specific recommendations include:

• Significantly increase funding for the Rural Energy for America Program (REAP), adding greenhouse gas pollution reduction to the program’s purpose and prioritizing projects that achieve the largest net decrease in emissions. *
• Direct USDA to study dual-use energy systems and establish a program to provide education, outreach, and technical assistance for farmers to integrate renewable energy projects on land shared with crops or livestock. *

5. Support the Next Generation of Farmers to Create a Fair and Equitable Food System

With over 370 million acres changing hands in the next 15 years, the nation has an opportunity for the transition to prioritize climate stewardship in all communities.  Specific recommendations include:

• Provide support for beginning and socially disadvantaged farmers to undertake climate-friendly farming, including –
• Increasing funding for the Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program (BFRDP) and Outreach and Assistance for Socially Disadvantaged Farmers (Section 2501).
• Make government-owned farmland available as incubator farms.
• Provide a farmer tax credit for taxpayers who sell farming property to new, beginning, and socially disadvantaged farmers, and tax credits for new and beginning farmers who purchase agricultural property. *
• Establish a federally-backed land trust to buy land from retiring farmers and sell it interest-free to beginning and socially disadvantaged farmers.
• Ensure that tribes have fair and equitable access to, as well as representation and participation in, all climate stewardship initiatives, programs, and funding in which states, local governments, and other interested entities can participate.
• Engage with and support environmental justice communities on climate stewardship practices, programs, and policies.

6. Preserve Farmland From Development

Saving farmland results in multiple benefits – reducing emissions from development, retaining opportunities for carbon sequestration, and reducing pressure to put more marginal lands into production with all its attendant carbon loss.  Specific recommendations include:

• Increasing funding for ACEP and CRP, including for farmland preservation, wetland restoration, and restoring cropland to grassland where there is high carbon sequestration potential. *
• Prevent the federal conversion of farmland by limiting conversion of productive farm and ranch land by federal agencies or by projects using federal funds. *

7.  Reduce Food Waste and Transportation

In the U.S., 30 to 40 percent of food goes uneaten through loss or waste, increasing greenhouse gas emissions in the process. More regional food systems have the potential to reduce transportation and energy use.Specific recommendations include:

• Increase funding for the Farm to School Program and modify requirements for the national school meal and child nutrition programs to allow schools to use locally grown as a product specification in food procurement.
• Increase funding for the Local Agriculture Market Program (LAMP) and create a new grant opportunity to support efforts to develop markets and processing infrastructure for commodities and farm products that improve soil health and carbon sequestration. *
• Increase support and investments in initiatives to reduce food waste at the consumer level, on the farm, in grocery stores and restaurants, in schools, throughout the government, and in landfills. *

What’s Next?

The recommendations of the Select Committee will be debated in Congress and help focus attention on practical steps that can be taken at the federal level to combat the climate crisis. The House will be taking up a major infrastructure measure that includes a wide variety of green energy and transportation provisions in the coming weeks. Later, it may turn to additional climate-related legislation. However, little Senate action, if any, is expected this year. From here on out, most of the attention will be focused on the November elections. 

What comes afterward remains to be seen, but the prospects for comprehensive climate legislation may improve, and if so, the new report will provide important template for legislative efforts, which will hopefully include a major agriculture title. 

Add to that prospect the scheduled rewrite of federal food and farm programs as part of the 2023 Farm Bill, with increasing talk about the possibility of the new farm bill happening sooner than that.

Regardless of the specific timing, Congress may well have at least two major opportunities – a comprehensive climate bill and the next farm bill – to re-orient federal farm programs toward much greater support for climate-resilient conservation farming and away from subsidies that foster overproduction, specialization, consolidation and even greater climate disruption.  The agriculture section of the report of the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis begins to provide some clues as to what that may entail, and is therefore an important contribution to the ongoing effort to create policies to support a more sustainable and regenerative agriculture.

Understanding voluntary private carbon markets can be confusing.

Will selling carbon credits generated by farmers help mitigate climate change? Will new legislation creating a certification program for carbon markets solve existing problems and confusion?

Thankfully, one of our partner organizations in the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition has some answers. The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) works locally and globally on fair and sustainable food, farm, and trade systems and IATP’s Tara Ritter wrote the article below to help us understand this complicated issue.

With Tara’s permission we are republishing her blog post about carbon markets and a new bill called the “Growing Climate Solutions Act.”

Senate Climate Bill Prioritizes Markets Over the Climate

By Tara Ritter

Senators Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Mike Braun (R-IN), and Lindsay Graham (R-SC) introduced the Growing Climate Solutions Act, a bill that would create a certification program through the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to facilitate farmer participation in voluntary carbon markets. Although farmers should be incentivized to adopt practices that boost resilience and sequester carbon, carbon markets have a failed and wasteful track record compared to public investments in proven conservation programs. This bill would tee up a framework incentivizing false solutions to climate change that benefits private companies over farmers.

The Growing Climate Solutions Act is designed to help farmers overcome barriers to participation in voluntary carbon markets. It would do this by establishing a USDA certification for third-party verifiers, which would include standards for measurement, verification, monitoring, and reporting. It would also create an online “one stop shop” to provide information for interested farmers, offer explanations on how to get started with generating carbon credits and connect farmers with USDA-certified entities to provide technical assistance. The bill also contains provisions to keep USDA up-to-speed on the rapidly-expanding landscape of carbon markets.

Voluntary carbon markets are privately-run schemes that pay farmers for carbon sequestered in their soils to generate carbon credits. Then, the company running the carbon market sells those credits to other companies or individuals interested in reducing their carbon footprint. Companies such as Indigo Ag and Nori are starting up voluntary carbon markets, claiming that they will increase farm profits while addressing climate change, all without imposing government regulations on farmers. Yet, Indigo Ag also plans to sell farmers proprietary seed coatings and collect farm data, raising questions of who will benefit most. Unsurprisingly, some of the biggest backers of these schemes are large agribusiness companies, including ADM, Bunge, Cargill, and more, that will be able to generate, buy, and sell carbon credits to boost their profits and greenwash their own operations.

The Growing Climate Solutions Act sets up a weak verification system for the markets. The system relies on third-party entities to both provide technical assistance and verify the carbon credits. Allowing an entity to both consult on best practices and certify adherence to those practices could lead to conflicts of interest. In addition, verifying entities may self-register in the program simply by notifying USDA that they will “maintain expertise in and adhere to the standards published.” This type of self-reporting will almost certainly be abused, and without strict enforcement it will weaken the results of already flawed carbon markets. The bill states that USDA will periodically conduct audits of the verifiers, although the bill does not say how often or rigorously these audits will happen, and the penalty for noncompliance is simply “equal to such amount as the Secretary determines to be appropriate.”

In addition to weaknesses around verification, carbon markets do not effectively reduce greenhouse gas emissions and should not be supported by policy. Soil carbon storage is extremely impermanent; any carbon sequestered in the soil can be released with a change in land management practices or through severe weather events. Since voluntary carbon markets do not require farmers to engage in conservation activities permanently, carbon credits cannot serve as a permanent offset for emissions elsewhere. Furthermore, the tools to measure soil carbon to the degree of accuracy and reliability that a market would require do not currently exist. The Growing Climate Solutions Act attempts to standardize measurement across carbon markets, but without certainty that the measurements used are accurate, quantifying soil carbon is a guessing game and does not guarantee actual emissions reductions.

Despite claims that voluntary carbon markets will incentivize climate-friendly agriculture, paying farmers for soil carbon offsets treats agricultural land narrowly as a carbon sink. Production for local food systems becomes a secondary function of farmland, bringing with it a range of social, economic, and food justice concerns. Agriculture should be viewed holistically; there are multiple benefits of a climate-friendly agricultural system, including healthier soils, clean water, wildlife habitat, and farm resilience to drought and flooding. Integrated systems of practices based on agroecology have the greatest potential to build resilience in the face of climate change, mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, and sequester carbon in the soil. Practices designed narrowly to generate carbon credits will not lead to comprehensive, systems-based changes.

As the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed, agricultural consolidation has led to weaknesses in the supply chain and a food system that’s unable to withstand disruptions. Climate solutions for agriculture must address and lessen corporate concentration in the agriculture sector. However, offset projects work best for large-scale farms that have the economies of scale to implement practices on enough land to actually profit from generating carbon credits. This raises concerns that carbon markets will contribute to further consolidation of agricultural land and disadvantage small to mid-sized farmers.

Today’s downturned farm economy has left farmers struggling to hold onto their operations. There’s an urgent need to reward farmers for practices that address climate change while increasing their operations’ resilience to climate change. However, successful and stable approaches cannot be linked to dysfunctional and volatile markets. Instead, predictable public funding can support farmers to implement conservation practices for the long term. Federal programs including the Conservation Stewardship Program and the Environmental Quality Incentives Program are examples of such funding sources. These programs are routinely over-enrolled and require additional funding to meet the demand of farmers. In addition, some states have created their own programs to address these challenges, including the cover crop program through the Maryland Department of Agriculture and the California Healthy Soils Program. These types of approaches should be expanded and strengthened to build forward-thinking public investment in a decentralized and resilient agricultural system.

There are better bills on the table to meet the goals of maximizing soil carbon sequestration and reducing emissions from agriculture, including Representative Chellie Pingree’s (D-ME) Agriculture Resilience Act and Senator Cory Booker’s (D-NJ) Climate Stewardship Act. To support farmers while meeting the urgency of the climate crisis, Congress should take proactive efforts to scale up public resources for conservation practices while enacting common sense checks on corporate concentration in the agriculture sector.