President Biden lacks authority to tap a $30 billion USDA fund to pay for climate mitigation, said two senior Republican senators on Tuesday, potentially limiting the administration’s role in combating global warming on the farm. Suggestions for a “carbon bank” at USDA to help farmers and foresters adopt climate-smart practices hinge on access to the fund held by an agency known as “USDA’s bank.”
Both of the farm-state senators said the administration would need congressional approval to use money from the Commodity Credit Corp. for initiatives that sequester carbon in the soil or trees or reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Agriculture is responsible for an estimated 10 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, although globally the figure is closer to 30 percent.
“We see farmers making American agriculture first in the world to achieve net-zero emissions and gaining new sources of income in the process,” said Biden one week after taking office. The USDA is consulting with the ag sector on elements of a “climate-smart agriculture and forestry strategy” so it has not specified how it would meet Biden’s goal. Friday is the deadline for public comment.
“I’m very much opposed to a carbon bank,” said Arkansas Sen. John Boozman, the Republican leader on the Senate Agriculture Committee. “I don’t think that the administration has the authority to do that. When you read the statute, it talks about agricultural commodities. To say that carbon is an agricultural commodity is really a stretch.”
North Dakota Sen. John Hoeven, the top-ranking Republican on the Senate Appropriations subcommittee that oversees the USDA budget, also was dubious. “I don’t think the legislative authority is there to do it.” Boozman and Hoeven spoke separately to the North American Agricultural Journalists annual meeting.
The CCC, created during the Depression era with broad authority to bolster commodity prices and farm income, can spend up to $30 billion at a time before asking Congress, usually once a year, to replenish its accounts. In a move that sparked questions about its legality, the Trump administration used the CCC to bankroll $23 billion in trade-war relief payments to farmers and ranchers, far more than was previously spent in stopgap aid by the USDA.
Boozman said he believed carbon markets should be a private undertaking. Some proponents say a USDA carbon bank could set a minimum price per ton of carbon sequestered. Others say a bank could share the cost of equipment farmers would need to adopt climate-smart practices; or it could pay them for mitigation activities. Both Boozman and Hoeven said the first duty of the CCC was to pay the annual cost of the farm program, which includes crop subsidies.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack “talked in terms of coming up with programs that are voluntary, for example (the Conservation Reserve) and saying…there wouldn’t be some kind of mandatory or forced program” to carry out the so-called 30-by-30 initiative, said Hoeven, describing a meeting of farm-state senators and Vilsack earlier in the day.
The goal of 30 by 30 plan would be to conserve at least 30 percent of U.S. land and coastal waters by 2030. Vilsack has pushed back on claims that 30 by 30 would be a federal land grab. But farmers, ever protective of their land from government intrusion, are wary. “I think we have to be careful, as I said from the start, that we’re working with programs that help and benefit our farmers, not putting mandates on them,” said Hoeven.
About 12 percent of U.S. land and 26 percent of its “ocean territories” are under some form of environmental protection, said Yale Climate Connection. “Getting to 30 percent on land has a long way to go. It will require environmental protections for a combined land area equal to twice the size of Texas.” Private land would be a crucial part of the effort; half of U.S. forestland is privately owned. Carbon sequestration could be aided by preservation of grasslands, planting cover crops on farmland and restoring tidal wetlands.
If implemented, 30 by 30 “could be a critical marker on the road toward a carbon-free future. Natural landscapes and seascapes are powerful carbon sinks, pulling CO2 from the atmosphere and storing carbon in soil, grasses, shrubs, and trees, coral reefs, sea grasses, and ocean floor sediments,” said Yale Climate Connection.