The chairwoman of the Senate Agriculture Committee called on Thursday for a $50 billion increase in funding for the USDA’s stewardship programs to combat climate change on farms and ranches. And a USDA report said forests could absorb an even larger share of U.S. carbon emissions than the current 14 percent through a combination of tree planting and prudent management.
President Biden wants U.S. agriculture, responsible for 10 percent of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions, to be the first in the world to achieve net-zero emissions. To meet the goal, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said the USDA is working on a “multi-pronged” strategy that is “centered on voluntary incentives that benefit producers and landowners.”
Forests and wood products would account for one of the seven elements in the USDA strategy, said the agency in a 20-page progress report. The report did not mention creating a “carbon bank” to help producers adopt climate-smart practices, although it said the USDA would leverage existing stewardship programs, which often offer financial incentives, to support carbon sequestration and reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. The USDA said it would provide more detailed information on its climate plans in the near future.
A USDA carbon bank was the hot topic for climate mitigation in agriculture for months, but it has lost momentum in recent weeks. Key Republican senators say the USDA does not have the authority to tap a $30 billion USDA account to pay for climate mitigation, and an early proponent, a coalition of farm, environmental, forestry, and food retailer groups, says the USDA should run some pilot projects to sort out what a carbon bank could do before actually launching one.
“I’m pushing for $50 billion more for USDA’s traditional conservation programs because the White House’s proposal isn’t anywhere near enough,” said Stabenow during an online news conference. “We have a once-in-a-decade opportunity to expand these programs and build farm bill baseline at the same time.”
Stabenow was one of the first lawmakers, if not the first, to out a potential price tag on climate mitigation. At present, USDA stewardship programs, such as the land-idling Conservation Reserve and the Conservation Stewardship Program, which pays farmers to make land, water, and wildlife conservation part of their day-to-day operations, cost around $60 billion over 10 years. On that time scale, a $50 billion increase would nearly double USDA outlays. A Stabenow aide said it was “too early to tell on (a) time frame at this point.”
Like many farm groups and farm state lawmakers, Stabenow lauded carbon contracts as a potential source of new income for producers. “Carbon markets might not work for all producers, so we need options,” she said in calling for increased funding for stewardship.
Much of the discussion of climate mitigation in agriculture has focused on farms and ranches. But between urban, private, and public lands, woods and forests cover one-third of the country, said the USDA.
“Forests and harvested wood products take up the equivalent of more than 14 percent of economy-wide CO2 [carbon dioxide] emissions in the United States annually, and there is potential to increase carbon sequestration capacity by approximately 20 percent … per year by facilitating replantings in understocked productive forestland.” The increase would be equal to 2.8 percentage points of U.S. emissions, taking the total to nearly 17 percent.
“Realizing this carbon potential while maintaining other ecosystem services, building resilience to climate change, and reducing risk to severe wildfire will require integrating climate considerations throughout forestry-related programs and practices in USDA,” said the report.
The USDA said its seven-point strategy would include the development of tools to quantify the carbon-sequestering value of climate-smart practices, which would complement private carbon markets; a portfolio of climate mitigation practices that farmers of all sizes could use; and more research into methods that slow global warming while bolstering food production.
Forests could be “climate powerhouses” with additional federal investment, said the conservation group American Forests. It advocates planting 1.2 billion trees in the national forests over the next decade.
The USDA’s 90-day progress report is available here.