Lawmakers should increase funding for the USDA’s land stewardship programs as part of the administration’s infrastructure bill because funding will probably be tight when Congress writes the 2023 farm bill, dozens of farm, conservation, and environmental groups said in a letter. “Action this year on the climate and infrastructure bill represents the best chance in decades to meet farmer demand for conservation programs,” the letter said.
“This is the time, this is the place, this is the bill,” said farm policy analyst Ferd Hoefner during a panel discussion of climate legislation on Wednesday. Advocacy groups, however, seem unprepared to fight for additional funding a year or two earlier than expected. “I haven’t seen the coalescing yet to carry this across the finish line,” said Hoefner during the discussion at the North American Agricultural Journalists meeting. He said “tens of billions of dollars” should be added to the so-called baseline for USDA stewardship programs.
Randy Russell, speaking for the Food and Agriculture Climate Alliance, which supports a USDA carbon bank, tax credits, and market-based incentives for climate mitigation, said there was strong bipartisan support in the Senate for a bill to create a USDA clearinghouse for information on climate-smart farming practices and to certify the agents who would vouch for carbon sequestration on the farm.
“I think we’ve got a lot of work to do in the House,” said Russell.