Agriculture's Role is Growing in the Effort to Stem a Changing Climate

(Solutions from the Land) The global climate negotiating sessions in Madrid come to a close this week, and producer advocates remain gratified that delegates to the talks have demonstrated a growing acceptance of the agricultural sector's role in addressing the climate crisis.

As SfL steering committee member Ray Gaesser pointed out during his remarks at an agriculture panel held at a conference side event Saturday, up until recent years, agriculture was usually cited as a problem contributing to climate change, rarely as a potential path forward to mitigate impacts. But the conversation among global negotiators is changing and is now focused on the solutions the sector can bring to meet the challenge.

A sea-change of sorts occurred in 2017 with a vote at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) among delegates at the global negotiating session in Bonn, designated as Conference of Parties (COP) 23. There, delegates moved forward with the Koronivia Joint Work on Agriculture (KJWA), a landmark policy decision that formally acknowledged the critically important role agricultural landscapes can play in sustaining productivity, enhancing climate resilience, and contributing to the local and global goals for sustainability.

The KJWA works through two conference subsidiary bodies (one for scientific and technological advice and the other to address implementation), which take into consideration the vulnerabilities of agriculture to climate change and approaches to addressing food security.

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Domestically, it has taken some time for many in the U.S. agriculture sector to fully recognize the depth of the climate challenge and, subsequently, step up to assert leadership in efforts to deal with it. However, that hesitancy to lead is fast fading, as evidenced by a Dec. 9 account in Politico. The politics- and policy-focused news outlet details an under-the-radar meeting in rural Maryland last June that drew together some of the leading voices in U.S. agriculture. Included among them were USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue, former Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, along with leaders of politically powerful farm interest groups such as the American Farm Bureau Federation, commodity groups, major food companies, green groups and anti-hunger advocacy organizations.

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Adequate compensation for ecosystem services is among the many proposals that SfL and NACSAA have called for in their climate-related work, which the article acknowledges, citing our projects in North Carolina, Missouri, Ohio, Florida and Iowa. We encourage other leaders in the sector to take an active part in this movement by joining NACSAA, offer enabling policy suggestions to the House Special Committee on the Climate Crisis, or by promoting climate smart agriculture by developing knowledge-sharing and capacity-building programs. Active participation in the development of policy will assure the best results for the solutions that agriculture can offer and the compensation those in the sector can receive. READ MORE

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