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December 5, 2022
U.S. agriculture policy deeply influences how we interact with food. If you have ever shopped at a farmers market, eaten a school-provided meal, or bought something using food stamps, then you have seen a massive piece of legislation known as the Farm Bill at work. This bill, which Congress is set to update next year, shapes how the U.S. farms, eats, and trades. Dan and Emma talk with Vanessa García Polanco, policy campaigns co-director of the National Young Farmers Coalition, to understand the history and impact of the Farm Bill. They are also joined by Keefe Keeley, executive director of the Savanna Institute, and Tucker Gretebeck of All Seasons Farm in Cashton, Wisconsin, to explore how a small but important aspect of the Farm Bill, planting trees on farms, can also benefit the climate.
Show notes:
Farm Bill Resources
Agriculture and Climate Article Series
Production support for this episode provided by Fall 2022 Communications & Policy Intern Elina Lingappa.
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With all the depressing climate news out there, it’s sometimes hard to see progress. The Climate Conversation cuts through the noise and presents you with relevant climate change solutions happening on the Hill and in communities around the United States.
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Episode Transcript:
Dan Bresette: Hello and welcome to The Climate Conversation. I'm Dan Bresette, Executive Director of the Environmental and Energy Study Institute. And with me as always is my intrepid co-host, communications associate Emma Johnson. Emma, are you ready for another great episode of this podcast?
Emma Johnson: Hi, Dan. I am definitely ready. We have this really amazing episode ahead of us on one of EESI’s favorite topics as of late, which is the 2023 Farm Bill.
Dan: Ah, yes, the Farm Bill. The Farm Bill, for those of you who don't know, is a massive, must-pass piece of legislation that is reauthorized every five years and covers a wide range of topics from conservation to rural development to food and nutrition. And 2023 is the next year of the Farm Bill.
Emma: EESI has been covering the Farm Bill in a variety of ways so far. Since the start of this year, we've been keeping track of all of the Congressional hearings that are related to the Farm Bill, providing policy highlights on each one in a set of trackers that can be found on our website. Some of our Congressional briefings have also covered related topics, including regenerative agriculture and clean energy investments in rural America. EESI staff have also written articles about sustainable agriculture practices and climate smart agriculture. And finally, the first podcast episode of this season, way back when in September, 2022, explored strategies to tackle school food waste, which is also covered in the Farm Bill. All of these resources can be found on our website or in the show notes of this episode.
Dan: We're going to keep these resources going through the end of this year, and for sure into next year, when the new Congress arrives. Plus, keep an eye out because early in the spring, we will be holding a series of Farm Bill-specific Congressional briefings that will highlight stories from farmers, ranchers and other people in the agriculture industry from across the country.
Emma: To learn more about the broad scope of the Farm Bill and what this legislation means for United States agricultural policy, let's turn things over to Vanessa García Polanco, policy campaigns co-director at the National Young Farmers Coalition, a nonprofit that works for justice and collective liberation of our food and farm systems.
Vanessa García Polanco: So the Farm Bill has been described as a swiss army knife. and I think that's actually really accurate. When it comes to shape how we eat in America and how we farm in America and everything in the middle. It is a really big package of multiple programs that are authorized. And this piece of legislation affects so many issues from our farms, to our food supply chain, to how we access food, and also more recently about how we process waste and manage natural resources. So all of that can be even not enough to describe the Farm Bill because it is so big. Usually, what I like to ask people is think about any meal that you have, or your favorite food. And usually there's a connection to the Farm Bill, because the Farm Bill enables all food production and consumption in the United States one way or another. I don't know where the five years came from, but when I look to other countries, when they're reauthorize similar bills every 10 or 20 years, that's scary, because so many things can happen. And 10 years, I think five is like a sweet spot. I like that its cyclical, because it allows us to re-envision and edit in things that we know are working or that are not working. For example, previous Farm Bill programs that we now consider are essential were not funded for years because of decline or loss of interest, or we thought we're no longer necessary. So those programs are still there but we're not funding them, like the Farmer Stress Assistance Network. And then we were like, oh my god we went years without funding this, and now this is causing a huge crisis with farmers, so we need to reinvest in that program. So I think having this really cyclical way to revise what food system we want to shape is kind of beautiful. And that's beautiful for us as advocates and food system that we have so many opportunities to engage in that process and redesigning and shaping our food system. And as a person that is truly passionate about involving people, eaters, farmers, consumers in food systems governance or shaping the food system that we want, I think that’s a beautiful opportunity.
Every Farm Bill is a little different depending on who's in power, what party is in power, what chamber, either the Senate or the House is leading the process. For example, we know that the next Farm Bill is going to be a lot of new Republican House members who is maybe their first time serving a Farm Bill year. So that's going to be a lot of learning for them. But it is also again, many other opportunities for us to be educated as members of Congress and reshaping our farm future. We always have reconciliation, when it's like after the two chambers each pass or Farm Bill, we negotiate how we want the final bill to look like. So again, everything is it's I think it's a really beautiful bipartisan process with many stakeholders who just want us to make sure that we are feeding our communities and keep American running on good food, but at the same time building climate resilience, feeding our communities and protecting our natural resources.
Let's say I'm walking around my neighborhood and there's a farmers market. Farmers markets are under the Agricultural Marketing Service enabled by their food promotion and local marketing grants. Farmers Markets apply for that money so they can run farmers markets, recruit farmers, and build more infrastructure to attract consumers. The farmers that are allowed to exist there are also authorized by the Farm Bill. Like the loans they apply, the grants they receive, some of the infrastructure they can build on their farms, some of the practices that they're able to use on their farms like organic, sustainable cover crops are supported by Farm Bill programs. So that's just me on a Saturday morning doing my grocery shopping. But then we have really macro-level ways that the Farm Bill impacts our food systems. So we sometimes tend to forget there's like commodities and trade parts of the Farm Bill that actually shape how much food we produce to export to other countries, and also how many food that’s going to be used for commodity production that are more shelf stable like corn and soy. So when we think about things that are like bigger, not just but beyond our food system that impact, the global food systems are also shaped by the Farm Bill, how much we decide to invest in commodities on trades and export in other food and nutrition international assistance programs that shape the global food system. In all those in part are also authorized by the Farm Bill.
Dan: It's still 2022 when this podcast is coming out. So the 2023 Farm Bill still has a long, long way to go before it becomes law. The House and Senate Agriculture committees are just beginning the process of drafting, amending, and voting on their own versions of the bill. After that, each chamber will pass their versions and they'll come together to resolve differences, with the end result being a single, gigantic bill that hopefully heads to President Biden's desk for signature before the end of next year.
Emma: There are going to be so many different programs and policies coming out of the Farm Bill that it will be challenging to keep them all straight. So let's go back to Vanessa to learn more about some of the programs that the National Young Farmers Coalition would be eager to see in this iteration of the Farm Bill, and how it can also advance environmental justice across the country.
Vanessa: I think many of us want this next Farm Bill to be a transformative Farm Bill. Because we learned so much our food systems during COVID, about our food supply chains, about feeding our communities, about helping farmers and essential food workers. But at the same time, we know that may not be possible under the political landscape that we're facing. But something that we hear from our farmers, and we just surveyed 10,000 farmers across the country, and this has been consistent among farmers since National Young Farmers Coalition was created 12 years ago, is that we need to invest in land access. And this became even more apparent during the pandemic when so many people saw land change hands and became more consolidated and owned by fewer people. For example, Bill Gates owns the most farmland in the United States right now, and he’s not a farmer. So that's causing a lot of effects on our young farmers and farmers in general ability to farm, feed their communities, and fight climate change. So we will love to see a robust investment in land access and tenure for the next generation of young farmers. Because when we think about the current farmers right now, most of them are getting close to retirement. And we know our farmers are declining. So we need to invest in pathways and pipelines for the next generation of young farmers to be on the land so they can feed our communities and fight climate change. Because if we don't do the investment in this Farm Bill, by 2030, our farming communities and foodways may look really different. And it is environmental justice because at the end, we're trying to equip our farmers with the tools and resources to fight climate change, which is the biggest concern that we hear from farmers everywhere. Us investing in a Farm Bill that focuses a lot on land access, because land is foundational to fight environmental injustices and climate change. And focusing on a Farm Bill that really focuses on conservation programs enables our farmers to fight climate change and build a stronger, shorter local or regional food supply chains. So we know our food is being more local and more resilient. And for example, a great program that my farmers love that allows them just to do that is the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education program that basically pays farmers to do research on their farms on how to mitigate climate change and implement sustainable agricultural practices. So programs like that are great opportunities for us to advance environmental justice in our farming communities. And that's also a way for how we build environmental justice by creating stronger food communities where farmers are interconnected to fit into communities, fighting climate change, and protecting the natural resources locally.
Emma: As we said before, there so many possible topics we could get into that are related to the Farm Bill, but we just can't cover them all in a single podcast episode. So we will be learning more about just one for this episode, which is agroforestry.
Dan: Agroforestry is the intentional integration of trees and shrubs into agricultural systems. Common agroforestry practices including planting crops between rows of trees, growing crops beneath the forest canopy, integrating trees and crops with grazing livestock, and planting trees and shrubs along riverbanks. These practices provide a wide array of benefits such as reducing erosion, shielding plants from extreme weather, and improving soil quality. To learn more about agroforestry and other sustainable agriculture practices like it, be sure to read our five-part agriculture and climate article series that is on our website and in the show notes of this episode.
Emma: To learn more about agroforestry and how it actually works in practice, we are excited to be heading to the Midwest to hear from Keefe Keeley and Tucker Gretebeck. Keefe is the executive director of the Savanna Institute, which is a nonprofit that works with farmers and scientists to lay the groundwork for widespread agroforestry adoption in the Midwest. Tucker is the manager, along with his wife Becky, of All Seasons Farm in Cashton, Wisconsin, which is a 50-cow, organic, grass-fed dairy farm. Keefe and Tucker, so happy to have you both on the show today. Thanks for coming.
Tucker Gretebeck: Happy to be here.
Keefe Keeley: Yeah, glad to be here. Thank you.
Emma: So Keefe, I want to start with you by getting a little bit deeper into why agroforestry can be such a transformational practice. Can you go into a bit more detail about what agroforestry is? And how can its successful implementation bring benefits to people, to farms, and to the climate?
Keefe: Absolutely. Well, agroforestry is just a fancy, $5 word for trees on farms, but trees on farms on purpose. So not just trees that happen to be growing here or there. But trees that are really a part of the working farming system. And this is not something that we just invented recently either. This is land use that's rooted in Traditional Ecological Knowledge. People here in the Midwest and all over the world have been farming with trees for really as long as we've been farming. But agroforestry is also the science and practice of how do we do that in 21st century farming systems. So that can look a lot of different ways, integrating trees into cropping systems, integrating trees into animal farming systems, and for all sorts of different purposes, for increasing the profitability and resilience of those farming systems, for environmental benefits, like sequestering more carbon and soil health and protecting water quality and wildlife habitat. And it can be for all sorts of recreational and aesthetic purposes too, just making farms more beautiful places that are pleasant for people to live and to visit. So it's more than just one thing. It's really an approach to farming that says, how do we integrate more trees and make our farming systems more diverse and more perennial as we do that.
Dan: Tucker, I'm interested to hear a little bit more about how you've implemented silvopasture, which means integrating trees and crops with grazing livestock on All Seasons Farm. From what I understand in May, with help from the Savanna Institute and other groups. You all planted about 1,100 trees on your farm. And I'm wondering, was there a moment? What was it that caused you to want to do this? And what were the benefits that you were hoping to realize by planting 1,100 trees on a farm that supports I think about 50 head of organic milk cows?
Tucker: Yeah, thanks for the opportunity, guys. Leading right into your question, this is something I've always wanted to do, because we're always trying to stay one step ahead, especially being an organic farm. And using the pasture system like we do, you know, one of the things that I'm always looking for is cow comfort. And that extra hour of eating, if there was shade, that turns right into, you know, a paycheck and shoes on the kids’ feet. And so we're always trying to manipulate what we have to make something more out of it. In August 28 of 2018, it kind of changed the way I farmed. We had 14 inches of rain overnight. There's a dam in our valley and it broke. The amount of water that was coming down… the farms up here on the ridge, and then it drops off 300 feet into a valley with a nice, beautiful, little creek coming through. And this changed everything, you know, there was so much water and when the soil above the dam, it brought sand and rock and trees and pretty much took away the pasture I had down there. And that pasture was pretty important to me during the summer because during the hottest times of the year, that's where I’d send the cows. And so that July, August, you know, 100 degrees, and you could put them in the woods and take them down to the valley. And they had everything they need down there to keep pushing on like we need them to. So this all kind of came to a head here with the Savanna Institute and Organic Valley and all the other groups that helped out, especially, you know, our own county agent, There was a need that I had here on the farm, I didn't know how I was going to do it, and combination of needs and people that knew how to do it that allowed me to get this done.
Emma: Thanks for sharing that, Tucker. Keefe, I was wondering if you could talk more about how the Savanna Institute works with different farmers around the region, farmers like Tucker to implement these sorts of practices. And Tucker, after Keefe shares his thoughts, I'd love to hear more from you about some of the other groups or partners or farmers that you work with in your day to day that helps make everything go smoothly.
Keefe: Yeah, absolutely. So Savanna Institute, we've been around for just about a decade now. So we're a fairly young organization. But we got our start in central Illinois, working with farmers who were starting to do agroforestry, and really being a learning network and community for farmers to learn from each other, and from folks in the research and university community too. And so as we've developed over the years, we now have what's called a team of technical service providers. And so these are folks who are effectively free consultants who work with farmers and also work with the USDA Natural Resource Conservation Service. Farmers like Tucker, who are interested in potentially doing agroforestry, come to us and say, here's what our questions are, here's what our goals are. And we've had a lot of folks coming to us, really more than we actually can provide service to. So there's a lot of demand for this and need for more of it. But the key is really the farmers that we work with, they decide, you know, what are their goals? What are their values? What do they want trees to do on their farm? So like Tucker, who raises livestock on pasture, shade, having shade for the animals during the heat, that was a key thing that he wanted the trees to do. So you know, we'll say, Well, let's look at your pastures. And where in the pastures do you need shade? And let's look at your farm and where it is what type of soil, what part of the country is it in, what kind of trees are going to grow well on your pastures? And where are we going to source those tree seedlings? What nurseries can we work with? How are we going to plant them? Are you going to plant them yourself? Or are you going to hire someone to do it? Who's available to do that? And then how do we navigate the bureaucracy of getting the USDA to help pay for it, getting those cost share applications submitted, which can be a lot of red tape to get through. Kind of you know, being there every step of the way working with farmers, because there's a lot of folks who want to do this. But if you haven't done it before, it does benefit to have folks you're working with who've done it before. And we also partner with other farmers too, especially folks who have been farming for many years, a lot of them want to share it. So we partner with farms, like Tucker's and doing educational programs in doing on farm research projects. That's part of it too, is building that network and opportunities for farmers to learn from each other.
Tucker: Everybody farms and everybody farms in a different way. And we have to make a go with it depending on what infrastructure we have to work with. But what we're trying to do is show examples of what we can do on our own farm. So no matter how or what kind of farming or practices you do, keeping the soil on your farm is probably the number one goal of every farmer. The health of the soil is, that's the huge goal. I mean, you can't raise quality crops without quality soil. And then it breaks down into smaller things like how do we, you know, get this water to go down in the ground instead of washing away. And cattle and other animals are so important to our practices here, you know, in this area, because without having the animals, there's no reason for the perennials, everything would be corn and beans, and the soil just tends to wash right away. It's things that we know, we know what we have to do. It's just finding a way to do it. Most farmers like me, you know, there's so much information out there, but we don't know how to access it. And having these groups brought together, it's like what Keefe said, the network. Our new watershed group here in our area, it's one of the key things to bring farmers together so we can show them where we are and how you know we can get this stuff done. And Organic Valley, where my milk goes and farmer owner, they are so supportive. And as far as the policy goes, you know, we've got people in there working towards the policies that will help us succeed and compete against big industry. There aren't many small farms like us left and it's a hard road to how, you know, keeping the small farms on the grid here keeps a diversified, instead of just raising one, two or three crops.
Emma: Thanks, Tucker. And, you know, you mentioned that there's all these resources, but you know, you're not sure how to access them all the time. What other challenges might exist out there for trying to get more of these practices implemented on farms around the Midwest? What do you think are the biggest challenges that exist right now? What are some solutions that you're thinking about to try and alleviate some of those obstacles?
Tucker: I can give you mine. My first two, I kind of alluded to it there, you know, 1,100, 1,200 trees, you know, how are we going to do that? So time, and the thing that goes right along with it is money. How is it possible that a farm my size can afford to do something like this? If I would have done it on my own, it would have taken me 20 years to probably get this done. Because we would have been able to afford one line of trees at a time. So on one contour, we did 25, pastures or paddocks, when we brought everybody together, and Matt from the Savanna Institute laid out the lines and Bob from NRCS came behind and marked them for me. And then I came with a skid steer and scratched off the topsoil of the grass so we could get up place to plant and then mulch over top, you know, just using the tools that we had, and then 12 people, 12 hours, basically two days, and we had it done. Just seeing what we did that first day was just eye opening, because it almost hurt my stomach thinking, I'm gonna be doing this all summer long. And how am I gonna get crops, and this is gonna be super painful, and the group we had took all the pain out of it, because they had done it before. And they didn't wince at all. No, they just smiled and said, Alright, let's go. And then they brought people in, and it happened so fast. And we still had time to eat dinner. So it's very possible and very doable. And that's one of the messages that I need to share with people because it just seems so overwhelming to do something like this. And it would have literally taken me years to do what we did in 12 hours.
Keefe: I think that's a really great set of insights from Tucker that just, you know, having the supports there, especially when it's a new thing for a farm and being able to work with both kind of technicians, as well as having some community and just the kind of people power to get it done. But for a lot of farms, labor, like Tucker says, time is a major limitation, and along with the economics of it. And so I think that's something that policies and public programs can really help turn the tide on. And to kind of zoom out a little bit, there's just there's so much about the larger food and farming system that doesn't support these more intensive and diversified farming practices. You know, a lot of our food and farming system is really a race to the bottom of how cheap can we produce commodities in monoculture farming systems. The way that we subsidize farming systems, the way that we insure them, and the ways that they're supported through the private sector, which has been incredibly consolidated too, that there just aren't a lot of options for farmers that want to color outside the lines. And so anything that you want to do outside those narrow boxes of the major commodities, you're swimming upstream, right out of the gate. So there are great public programs that support agroforestry right now, that come through the USDA, but they're almost all through conservation programs in the conservation title of the Farm Bill. EQUIP, CSP, RCPP, if you're in the alphabet soup of all those programs, and there's really helpful and valuable things there for farmers and landowners to use, but it is challenging to access it. And it doesn't flow through to the farms as streamlined as the commodity titles. So I think that's one thing that could be changing, this new partnership for climate smart commodities, is purportedly going to allow individual pilot projects, which Savannah Institute is a part of two of those projects, to provide direct subsidy and incentive payments, based on the greenhouse gas benefits of those practices, rather than having to go through all the application process for those conservation programs. From my point of view, you know, a lot of that's going to be the devils in the details, but ultimately, what we need, society wide, are food and farming systems that support not just the production of cheap commodities, but support farms to do all the things that we need farms to do. We really need farmers like Tucker to be climate heroes and make farms sequester as much carbon as possible. And agroforestry is one of the best tools we have to do that. And we need farms that are going to help reduce flooding risk like Tucker has described. We need farms that are gonna hold that soil in place for future generations. We need farms that are going to give us clean surface waters and groundwaters, farms that host home for wildlife, all kinds of wildlife. And farmers can't just do that out of the goodness of their heart. But you know, like Tucker says, a lot of farmers know generally what they need to do to provide these things for wider society. But the support isn't there for them to do it when all of the pressures in the status quo is to farm in very narrow ways in that race to the bottom way. So I think, you know, that's the big picture challenge, is how do we as a society, you know, through public policies in the USDA, but also through how we organize our food systems and marketplace, how do we support farmers that are going to do some things that are different and for the public benefit?
Dan: Well, thanks, Keefe, that kind of leads me to where I wanted to talk a little bit about next. Earlier in this episode, we talked a lot about the Farm Bill, which is coming up next year. And so I'd like to pivot to talk a little bit about that. I'm curious about what opportunities you might see, Keefe and Tucker, very interested in hearing from you on this too, as the practitioner and all of this, you know, what are the kinds of opportunities in the Farm Bill, what are some things that could be done in the context of the Farm Bill that would make agroforestry and some of these climate-friendly agriculture practices more common, whether they're common sort of farm by farm or common at scale, and in larger operations?
Tucker: The biggest thing that comes right to the forefront here is, you know, being a farmer, and learning from other farmers, were generations of us have been on this land, my kids will be the fifth. And what we need to see, basically that's it, we need to see it. There has to be practices on the ground, and we have to prove that they work before you'll get another farmer to jump in. It's a leap of faith, even when we went grass-fed, you know, everybody said that, you'll never make it. It's impossible, the cows will never get bred back, they’ll lose weight. But it was those older farmers and people have been farming this way, and still, there was a farmer on one of our calls that that said, you know, that first year, you just got to hang in there. Because, you know, it's going to take a whole lactation to change that cow, you know, back into being a cow. And sure enough, you know, we got worried, milk dropped 20% or so. And they refreshed and, and all of a sudden, the weights came back on, everybody was, you know, bred back. We did it. But you had to listen to those older, wiser people that told you, you know, just have faith. And we've done this before, you know, we're not reinventing the wheel, but we forget over time of what works. And we're always on to this new and better thing. But sometimes it's a simple tool that fixes our problems, the problems that I have, I think we just fixed it. And you think about my son or daughter wanting to take over, because I know my body is not going to hold up doing this forever. And we just put a practice in place that number one is going to give me what I, you know, the cows need. Number two, it's aesthetically going to be just absolutely beautiful. So what if my son doesn't want to farm like I did, just like I didn't want to farm exactly like my dad did. You know, when I'm expecting that we just opened up a whole new avenue. So you want to put cabins in or you know, he's keeps talking about farm to table, we do a agritourism part now, so if he wants to expand that it just opened up a whole new world of opportunities to him that weren't here before the trees were.
Keefe: Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a great point Tucker about, you've got to see it, to believe it and understand it. And I think that's human nature, for anybody, but especially for farmers, where there's so much risk in doing new things. And so I think one thing that the Farm Bill can support in a variety of different ways is demonstrations, both for leaders, farmers, who are the first in their community to do something new, like Tucker. And for places like the Agricultural Research Services long-term ecological research stations and agricultural research network sites. So those are oftentimes in association with universities or federal research sites, having agroforestry a part of those research and demonstration sites and then put that in the statutes via the Farm Bill. So that there is a place where people can go and see it and learn about it. And research is being done there to improve those practices. I think across the Farm Bill, there's a lot of ways to work agroforestry in both to include it as a possibility but also to put it first in line along with other farming practices that are going to have a lot of bang for the buck when it comes to climate change and greenhouse gas mitigation. Because, you know, we really need the Farm Bill to be climate bill. And agroforestry again is one of the best tools that we have to do that. So a lot of the existing conservation programs I mentioned already allow for agroforestry but they're can be set aside funds specifically for agroforestry systems, those incentive payments, the rates can go up. So there's a lot of ways to really make it more feasible for farmers to take the risk and do new things. I think insurance and credit is a big interest too, especially because the payback on some of these systems can take a long time just because trees take longer to grow. You know, how long is it going to be until Tucker's cattle are getting shade from the little trees that he planted, it’ll be a few years. So if he had to borrow money to do that, then he shouldn't have to pay that back at a high interest rate. You know, that's something the Farm Bill can help to make possible. Insurance as well as something that is not well suited currently, federal crop insurance policy for diversified and perennial crops to or for operations, like a grass-fed dairy, you know, they're in the big dairy insurance programs, and it's not customized for the needs of their operation. So more customized insurance policies, I think, could really help agroforestry move forward as well. That's just a few highlights, you know, but I think there's some great folks in some of the policy shops that work on sustainable agriculture that I'm really excited to see them. But looking at it looking hard at agroforestry and working with colleagues on the Hill to see how it can get worked into the Farm Bill in meaningful ways.
Dan: It's great to see small dairies like Tucker's doing well, and if anything we could do, I suppose to make it easier to take that risk, right, what you called the leap of faith you knew in your heart, it was the right thing to do. And making it easier for other firms to follow your path, I think would be probably a pretty worthy outcome for the Farm Bill. It was so nice to hear from both of you today and to meet you. So Keefe and Tucker, thank you so much for joining us, and we wish you all the best.
Tucker: Thank you guys very much for the opportunity.
Keefe: Well, thanks. Nice to meet you all. Great to see you, Tucker.
Tucker: Yeah, you too.
Dan: Well, that was super interesting conversation with Keefe and Tucker. For someone like Tucker, to be making a go of it and by taking calculated risks, that's not an easy thing to do. And so hats off to Tucker, for doing a really remarkable job and hats off to Keefe for helping to provide these resources and technical assistance and connections to peers and other support that really helped Tucker do what he really knows what he ought to do, which is plant trees on his farmland to help keep the water from washing off all the soil and providing shade to his cows on hot days. We have a ton of stuff coming up on the Farm Bill. Today we focused on agroforestry. But like Emma said at the outset, there's a lot to discuss. We already have some briefings, we have some great articles, some trackers. Our goal for 2023 is to position our educational resources so that they're ready before Congressional staff need them. At some point next year, every Congressional staff person who covers agriculture is going to have to become an expert on the Farm Bill, which is a very, very tall order. And many of those staff people don't even work on Capitol Hill. By the time this episode comes out, they haven't even been hired yet. It's really important for us to have these resources available to Congressional staff before they need them. Because it's going to be too late once their boss starts asking questions about all this stuff, we need to make sure that that we're all ready to go. So the Farm Bill is going to be a major, major focus of next year. And hopefully, our resources are practical and useful and helpful, so that Congressional staff can get up to speed quickly, which is going to be really, really important. If we're going to see the Farm Bill enacted within a few standard deviations of the deadline of September 30.
Emma: Totally agree, Dan. It's amazing the amount of work that we've put into as a staff and to putting these resources together. And they're really going to be so helpful for anyone who's looking to learn more about the Farm Bill, whether you're a staffer on Capitol Hill, or if you also work in this Farm Bill policy space, or if you're just interested in what happens in the world of agriculture, because it touches everything that we do. Even if you don't work on a farm, it's important to remember that and keep in touch with what's going on and help see it through to the end. So this has been the second to last episode of The Climate Conversation for the season. In two weeks, towards the end of December, we're going to have a great conversation with Alejandro Moreno from the Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. And it's going to be great to wrap up the season with him to talk about the work that's been going on throughout the Biden-Harris administration throughout the Department of Energy, all the things that they've done so far, and addressing climate change and all the work that they hope to do from here. And if you liked the story and want to learn more EESI’s work related to the Farm Bill, head to our website at eesi.org. Also follow us on social media @eesionline for all of our recent updates. The Climate Conversation is published as a supplement to our bi-weekly newsletter, Climate Change Solutions. Go to eesi.org/signup. Thanks for joining us and see you next time.
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