President Biden’s months-delayed budget calls for small increases in land stewardship spending, around $300 million a year in the near term, by USDA to mitigate climate change. The administration also proposed a $65 million increase in funding for USDA’s ReConnect program to deploy broadband to under-served areas.
An additional $46 million would be earmarked for a Civilian Climate Corps to “provide pathways to employment for a diverse generation of Americans to promote environmental sustainability.”
Biden wants American agriculture to be first in the world to achieve net-zero emissions of greenhouse gases. The administration has said climate mitigation would create new sources of income for farmers, ranchers and foresters such as payments for locking carbon into the soil and trees or new bio-based products.
Conservation activists hoped for a doubling of funds for land stewardship programs, which now get around $6 billion a year. The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition said “while climate change is a clear focus in the president’s budget, it falls far short of the transformative investments in working lands conservation” that were desired.
The administration was silent on potential changes in USDA authority to pay for a carbon bank, often mentioned as a vehicle to help producers adopt climate-smart practices.
Congressional approval will be sought for four changes in stewardship programs, said the USDA. Two of them, running for four years at a combined cost of $600 million, would increase adoption of “net-zero agriculture technology” in the Regional Conservation Partnership Program and the Healthy Forests Reserve Program. The administration also will ask for a $500 million increase over 10 years in the Environmental Quality Incentives Program for technology to increase drought resilience on the farm. And it would ask for a $1 billion increase over a decade to increase watershed and flood prevention operations.
“Rural Americans are more than 10 times likelier than urban residents to lack access to quality broadband, with unique challenges for tribal communities,” said USDA. “The budget provides $700 million, a $65 million increase over the 2021 enacted level, to support broadband loans, grants and loan/grant combinations that will provide high-speed broadband services to communities with populations under 20,000.” Rural lawmakers have pressed for larger funding of the popular ReConnect program.
Earlier this year, Biden proposed $100 billion to bring broadband service to all Americans.