USDA's voluntary tack on climate change brought farmers along; next job is convincing Wall Street, environmentalists

Methane emissions from livestock are not targeted by the USDA's
initial program, which focuses on soil. (Photo by Mario Tama, Getty)

President Biden’s plan to help farmers reduce their greenhouse-gas emissions "has the powerful, conservative Beltway farm lobby smiling ear-to-ear," Garrett Downs of Politico reports. "That’s enough investment to turn the agricultural lobby around on Biden, for now. But the administration acknowledges it still has a long way to go in proving to climate advocates that its plan will reduce the effects of global warming in a meaningful way."

Biden's main tool is "a $3 billion initiative dubbed Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities," which is spending to test farming methods that reduce carbon-dioxide emissions, "akin to a large-scale science experiment," Downs writes. It aims to involve 60,000 farms and 25 million acres. "The Agriculture Department estimates the results will produce emissions benefits equal to taking around 12 million cars off the road."

Administration officials hope the "influx of cash will produce an impressive feat: turning some farmers, generally a conservative group, around on Biden," Downs reports. The so-called Inflation Reduction Act "will grow the incentive-driven climate-ag space by nearly $20 billion," and "They have even broader hopes for the new $3 billion initiative: that Wall Street will see the financial possibilities of turning farms green and make their own investments in similar projects."

Cover crops seeded into mature corn are a big part of the private
carbon-control market. (Photo from DTN/The Progerssive Farmer)

“This can’t just be government money; we have to attract private investment,” said Robert Bonnie, the USDA’s undersecretary of farm production and conservation. “Part of the real interest in the Partnerships program is a way to provide seed money to entice more folks in the private sector to come in … The government’s not going to do it alone.” He added, “If we’re going to maintain agriculture and forestry support for this, it’s got to stay voluntary. And if we can prove that this approach works, we have a high probability of doing that.”

Bonnie, a Kentucky native, is "a veteran of the Obama administration and saw that administration’s cap-and-trade approach go up in smoke," Downs notes. "He researched how to gain support in rural communities for environmental efforts."

Downs points out, "Wall Street has been nervous about investing in green supply chains — and in particular in purchasing carbon credits under government programs designed to quickly offset pollution from farms. Last year, a Bloomberg article exposed that scores of companies claiming to be eco-friendly actually purchased carbon credits that turned out to be bogus. . . . But after USDA provides significant monetary incentives to farms around the country to go green, Wall Street will have a better idea of what works and what doesn’t — and which carbon credits and sustainable farming tools are worth the money."

UPDATE, Aug. 11: Chris Clayton of DTN/The Progerssive Farmer reports, "With at least 22 different carbon programs being marketed now to farmers by private companies, a new research paper looks at how those programs should be transformed to deal with barriers to adoption and ideally broaden the adoptions of conservation practices in the process."