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May 10, 2023
Find out more about the briefings in this series below: The Process and Path Forward for Passing a Bipartisan Farm Bill Climate, Energy, and Economic Win-Wins in the Farm Bill Unlocking Rural Economies: Farm Bill Investments in Rural America The Future of Forestry in the Farm Bill Conservation Practices from Farms to Forests and Wetlands
The Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI) invites you to watch a briefing on promising win-wins made possible by Farm Bill provisions. Agriculture accounts for about 11 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time, farms, ranches, and forests across the country continue to be negatively impacted by climate-related events like drought, flooding, and extreme heat. Farm Bill programs—spanning from conservation to rural development—can bolster both climate change mitigation and adaptation while creating economic opportunities for farmers, ranchers, and rural communities.
During this briefing, panelists explained how the Farm Bill helps agricultural producers and communities drive down greenhouse gas emissions while also building climate and economic resilience, with discussions of the role of agroforestry, urban agriculture, distributed energy resources, and agricultural research and innovation.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Micah McMillan, Senior Analyst, Natural Resources and Environment, U.S. Government Accountability Office
The Government Accountability Office’s (GAO’s) climate-related work focuses on improving climate resilience to reduce the fiscal exposure of the federal government.
At the start of each new session of Congress, GAO issues the High Risk List, which identifies programs and operations that are high risk due to vulnerabilities to fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement or that need transformation. Federal fiscal exposure and climate change were added to the list of risk factors in 2013.
GAO’s past recommendations have focused primarily on integrating climate resilience into existing programs and operations and creating new institutions to address cross-cutting issues.
In 2019, GAO published the Disaster Resilience Framework organized around the principles of information, integration, and incentives. It can assist federal decision-making related to improving resilience to disasters and climate change.
In February 2023, GAO published the report, Climate Change: Options to Enhance the Resilience of Agricultural Producers and Reduce Federal Fiscal Exposure, which summarizes actions that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has taken and can take to help producers enhance their resilience. The report reviews the strengths and limitations of these actions. Increasing resilience is important to consider because between 2018 and 2021, more than $15 billion was appropriated in agricultural disaster relief assistance.
USDA’s actions have primarily been carried out through its Climate Hubs, which conducted a series of regional vulnerability assessments in 2015. From this, USDA developed region-specific tools and guidance to help producers take action on their own.
USDA developed department-wide climate resilience planning starting in 2021, which was updated in 2022.
Technical and financial assistance provided through USDA’s conservation programs can provide indirect incentives to producers to enhance their resilience.
Depending on how the Inflation Reduction Act (P.L. 117-169) is implemented, some climate change provisions could create indirect incentives to help producers enhance their resilience.
GAO released a list of potential options to bolster climate resilience in agriculture, including:
Collect data on practices that enhance climate resilience.
Expand technical assistance to prioritize and promote climate resilience.
Prioritize climate resilience in whole-farm conservation planning.
Expand the capacity and expertise of USDA's Climate Hubs.
Experts have found that implementing multiple options together has the most potential to improve producer resilience because it will leverage the strengths and address the limitations of the various options.
Audrey Epp Schmidt, North American Agroforestry Program Manager, The Nature Conservancy
Agroforestry refers to the practice of combining trees with agricultural fields and is a promising way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while maintaining productive farms.
The Nature Conservancy, USDA, and many other organizations and coalitions have been investigating what agroforestry can look like in conjunction with modern industrial farming.
USDA has been promoting agroforestry since the 1998 Farm Bill, which established the National Agroforestry Center.
There are several main types of agroforestry: alley cropping, windbreaks, silvopasture (i.e., adding trees that benefit grazing animals), riparian buffers (i.e., adding forested areas alongside waterways to benefit water quality), and forest farming.
Agroforestry improves biodiversity and introduces habitat for pollinators.
Less than two percent of agricultural land uses agroforestry. There are technical, social, and financial challenges that currently limit the use of agroforestry.
There is a high upfront cost, and it can take five to ten years to see the benefits from agroforestry.
The Nature Conservancy will be working with USDA on a $60 million Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities grant to promote agroforestry; $36 million of this will be going directly to farmer incentive programs.
The goal of the program is to create a national network of example farms that producers can use to inform their choices around agroforestry and determine how it would best function for their properties.
To make agroforestry viable for some producers, it is necessary to grow new markets for agroforestry products, for example by using a product label.
The Farm Bill offers an opportunity to de-risk some of the barriers to the use of agroforestry by providing technical assistance, research, and incentive programs.
Moy Mendez, Pastor; Executive Director, Hope Center
Hope Center aims to add social, economic, and spiritual value to low- and moderate-income communities in Blue Island, an area adjacent to Chicago, Illinois.
Hope Center includes programs like auto mechanic technical training, business workshops, and an urban community garden and farm.
The urban agriculture program, Hope Garden, is designed to address mental wellness and food security as well as to promote organic farming and economic development through agriculture.
Hope Garden aims to educate the community on economic development and innovation. It encourages community members to start their own gardens for personal or commercial use.
Stacie Peterson, Energy Program Director, National Center for Appropriate Technology
Agrisolar is the co-location of solar energy production on agricultural lands, including cropland, grazing pastures, beekeeping apiaries, and dairies.
With agrisolar, farmers harvest the sun twice—once with crops, once with solar panels.
Agrisolar can help to diversify farmer revenue and can reduce irrigation needs by shading crops.
Solar panels operate most efficiently at cool temperatures. Crops can help to lower the temperature of the solar panels, increasing their efficiency.
An Argonne National Laboratory study found that up to three times as many pollinators are present around agrisolar projects compared to standard fields.
Agrisolar receives support from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Solar Energy Technologies Office and USDA’s Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities program and Rural Energy for America Program.
The AgriSolar Clearinghouse includes an information library, best practices, fact sheets, case studies, and financial assistance maps.
The AgriSolar Clearinghouse is hosting a Follow the Sun Tour to demonstrate agrisolar to communities across the country and promote technical understanding among potential users.
Kathleen Draper, Board Chair, International Biochar Initiative
Biochar is an overbaked organic material that traps carbon and stores it for hundreds or thousands of years by preventing decay.
Biochar is made in a high-heat, low-oxygen environment. It is a cost-effective method of organics management, can be profitable through the sale of carbon credits, and can be made by both small- and large-scale operations.
Combining biochar with other materials can produce a slow release fertilizer, which is currently in high demand in agricultural markets.
Combining biochar with compost can reduce methane emissions by up to 80 percent.
Building soil carbon can alleviate toxins in soils, potentially helping to restore currently unusable soil for agricultural use.
Nitrogen is the most limiting nutrient in most crop production, so nitrogen fertilizer is widely used. However, there are significant environmental impacts to the use of nitrogen fertilizer, especially because over 50 percent of applied nitrogen is lost into the surrounding environment. Using biochar as a base for nitrogen increases efficiency and reduces nitrogen loss.
USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service recently passed a soil carbon amendment protocol to incentivize farmers to increase their soil carbon levels, including by using biochar.
The U.S. Forest Service has used funding from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (P.L. 117-58) to demonstrate how to use mobile equipment to thin forests and help create demand for the resulting biochar.
Another program that has the potential to support biochar is the USDA BioPreferred program.
Q&A
Q: What workforce opportunities are generated by the win-wins we have discussed today?
McMillan
Every time a producer improves their climate resilience, that is a job saved. Every job that the producer supports, as well, is a job saved.
Schmidt
There is an industry of technical service providers involved with agroforestry to support U.S. farmers in adopting conservation practices.
Professional development in the field can help existing workers become more comfortable with new tools and emerging practices.
Mendez
Community members get to see the possibilities in urban agriculture and create economic development opportunities.
Peterson
Integrating energy and agriculture can diversify farm income and bring solar installation jobs into rural communities.
The Inflation Reduction Act (P.L. 117-169) will bring solar energy growth to the United States at a rapid rate, and this will bring prices down for consumers.
Draper
Biochar is a way to diversify revenue streams.
Q: What opportunities exist to integrate biochar with other win-wins such as agroforestry?
Agroforestry requires rigorous pruning to foster proper growth, and this is a great source of biomass for creating biochar. That biochar can then be used for planting crops.
Research has shown that biochar provides immunity to some diseases in trees as well as other benefits.
There is a tremendous opportunity for the integration of biochar into agrisolar.
A site that is already a bare-ground solar installation could become an agrisolar installation with the use of biochar. Farms could incorporate biochar soil amendments as well when they are installing solar.
There is a lot of interest in the agroforestry industry around the opportunities with biochar.
Complementary opportunities to use inputs that are more regenerative are important to explore when working in regenerative systems.
Q: What does a successful 2023 Farm Bill for regenerative agriculture look like over the next five years?
The ultimate success would be that products at the grocery store promote that they are grown in an agroforestry setting, which would enable climate-conscious shopping.
Crop insurance could also be provided specifically for agroforestry crops.
The Farm Bill will succeed if it makes communities healthier.
Success would be seeing agrisolar as a standard practice in solar installation around the country.
The Farm Bill could include provisions that make agrisolar affordable, accessible, and practical for farmers while investing in more research on the topic.
Success looks like incentivizing resilient practices.
If Congress decides to pursue additional resilience actions, progress should be made on GAO’s identified resilient agriculture options.
Q: Are there any new developments that Congressional staff should be aware of over the next year in regards to resilience in agriculture?
GAO released the High Risk List update in April 2023.
Joe Thompson, Assistant Director, Natural Resources and Environment, GAO
There are around 10 projects underway at GAO that look at different programs in the agriculture sector.
People should pay attention to what USDA puts out in its continued climate change adaptation progress reports. In these reports, USDA should be able to provide specific information about whether it will or will not move forward on GAO’s identified resilient agriculture options.
Q: How can the United States foster the next generation of farmers and workers in the agriculture sector?
Hope Center is helping people be curious about imagining a different future. Hope Garden helps young people imagine what it would look like for them to be a farmer using regenerative agriculture methods.
Agrisolar draws excitement from the energy and sustainability sectors.
It is not a challenge to find young people involved in agriculture.
Affordability is a barrier to getting more people involved in farming. Land and the equipment for farming is expensive.
Affordability and land access are important to address to bring young farmers into the field.
We are in a time of historic land transfer, and this opens up the opportunity for people to do something regenerative with land left to the family.
Q: What information about these win-wins resonates with audiences you speak with?
When talking about biochar, we can discuss soil health, resilience, and yield improvements.
Focusing on the resilience framework is important, and it is important to discuss the fiscal impacts of climate change as well.
Thompson
GAO became interested in climate change due to its fiscal impacts. In the context of agriculture, GAO focuses on risk management.
At GAO, greenhouse gas emission reduction discussions are separate from climate resilience discussions.
Q: What are other areas that should be considered during Farm Bill discussions that present a win-win for climate, energy, and economics?
Forever chemicals such as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) can be degraded in the pyrolysis process that creates biochar. This can be used to immobilize these chemicals in the soil. And it could enable farmers to grow on land that was once toxic, but more research is needed.
Particularly in California and in the deserts in the Southwest, canals are being built and then covered with solar panels. This is a way to save water while generating power.
The win for our communities is reflected in how they become healthier, happier, and more creative by integrating these agricultural practices.
Silvopasture can be complemented with well-managed grazing techniques.
Edge-of-field practices such as wetlands, two-stage ditches, and prairie strips should be used in agroforestry.
Every time resilience is built into the agriculture sector, there will be transferability to other sectors. Mainstreaming climate resilience can have a cascading effect on other sectors.
Compiled by Lynlee Derrick and Isabella Millet and edited for clarity and length. This is not a transcript.
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