The USDA’s climate mitigation initiatives will be built on a simple rule: “If they don’t work for producers and landowners, they’re not going to work for the climate,” said Robert Bonnie, the Biden nominee to run the USDA’s crop subsidy and land stewardship programs, on Thursday. “Making sure we get that right is going to be a high priority.”
Bonnie, who joined the agency as climate adviser to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack on Jan. 20, said climate mitigation would be voluntary, incentive-based, and locally led. During a confirmation hearing before the Senate Agriculture Committee, Bonnie said he would consult both Congress and farmers while designing climate programs. President Biden wants U.S. agriculture to be the first in the world to achieve net-zero emissions of greenhouse gases and says farmers will make money doing it.
Agriculture Committee chairwoman Debbie Stabenow said Bonnie and former New Mexico Rep. Xochitl Torres Small would be the “USDA’s first line of customer service” if confirmed by the Senate. Bonnie was nominated for undersecretary for farm production and conservation and Torres Small for undersecretary for rural development. After the generally friendly two-hour confirmation hearing, Stabenow said she strongly supported the nominees and hoped to advance them to a floor vote soon.
At the hearing, Torres Small described herself as “a sunny woman of her word who will always fight for the underdog” and said she would work to see that rural communities “are not left in the slow lane” of the internet. Bonnie, a forester by training, grew up on a farm in Kentucky, and he and his wife own a 285-acre farm in the Washington exurbs. He was agriculture undersecretary for natural resources during the Obama era.
“Production and conservation are the flip side of the same coin,” Bonnie said. “Agricultural production is vital to meet the food and fiber needs of a growing world, but that production relies on healthy soils, clean water, and a stable climate.”
Some farm state Republican senators, such as Deb Fischer of Nebraska, are leery that the USDA will turn to mandates to achieve its climate goals. John Boozman of Arkansas and John Hoeven of North Dakota say the USDA lacks the authority to create a carbon bank to help farmers adopt climate-smart practices. The carbon bank was a hot idea last winter, but support for it has cooled amid rural skepticism about the economics of climate action and doubts among environmentalists about the practicalities of carbon sequestration on the farm.
The USDA has been occupied with the rollout of pandemic aid and economic recovery funds in recent weeks. And there are suggestions that climate mitigation should be woven into the 2023 farm bill. Congress may start work on the legislation late this year.
In the climate arena, the USDA offered a $5-an-acre discount on crop insurance premiums for growers who plant cover crops, and said it will introduce a “climate-smart practice” incentive payment to encourage enrollment in the Conservation Reserve.
Bonnie said the USDA will try to make its programs more welcoming to small and socially disadvantaged farmers. “We will have an equity commission,” he said, referring to a project that will examine USDA programs for systemic discrimination. In March, Vilsack appointed the first USDA racial equity adviser, Dewayne Goldman, to lead the commission to “identify and root out any systemic racism that may exist” in USDA programs.
“We have heard time and time again, people don’t feel welcome when they walk through the door” at the USDA, said Sen. Raphael Warnock, a Georgia Democrat.
While some Republican senators have emphasized funding for crop subsidies and the taxpayer-supported crop insurance program, Sen. Cory Booker, a New Jersey Democrat, said “tens of billions” of dollars should be put into “working land” programs.
To watch a video of the confirmation hearing or to read written testimony by Bonnie and Torres Small, click here.