Can Biden Keep His Promise to Make Farms Climate Friendly?

November 16, 2020

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by Charlie Mitchell (The New Republic) The president-elect will have to overcome major obstacles, including some of his own advisers and campaign proposals. -- Last month, when asked on Pod Save America to name three or four things atop his first-term agenda, Joe Biden mentioned a surprising topic: farm policy. “I know it’s boring as hell, but it’s consequential,” he said, adding that agriculture could be “the first net-zero industry in America” when it comes to carbon emissions. The president-elect is right—it could be.

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If the country is serious about reducing carbon emissions, farm policy must play an essential role. As a recent blockbuster study in Science made clear, even if we had the zero-emissions energy grid of our fantasies, greenhouse gases expelled during food production would still warm the planet past two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), the Paris Agreement goal. Livestock—mostly cows—belch a lot of methane, and manure emits noxious greenhouse gases. Fertilizers and other crop chemicals require copious fossil fuels to produce, and when they get overused, nitrogen suffocates waterways and pumps the atmosphere with nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas.

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His agriculture policy, which appears primarily in his rural and climate plans, was influenced heavily by fellow Obama administration alum Tom Vilsack, the former Iowa governor who served as secretary of agriculture from 2009 to 2017.

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As a result, portions of Biden’s farm plans—particularly those that offer solutions to climate change—traffic in false solutions advanced by corporate interests. The premier example of this is ethanol, a climate and policy disaster that Democrats have nonetheless refused to renounce.

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Biden even ripped Trump for being insufficiently pro-ethanol.

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Biden’s policy proposals include appending digesters to factory farms and making biogas out of their methane-heavy manure (which still emits carbon dioxide when burned)—a failing technology that accommodates rather than regulates the most pollutive farms. He backs the corporate campaign to create a market for carbon sequestered in farmland.

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For many climate and sustainable farm advocates (as well as the Congressional Black Caucus), the preferred choice for agriculture secretary is Marcia Fudge, a Black congresswoman representing Ohio’s 11th district in Cleveland and the subcommittee chair for nutrition and oversight on the House Agriculture Committee. Fudge could pivot the USDA’s focus from the agribusiness lobby toward the well-being of the broader public, dislodging a crucial roadblock to progress on climate through agriculture. She’s fought for smarter and increased investment in conservation before, which is what environmental advocates are prioritizing.

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Georgia Representative David Scott, who has received Peterson’s endorsement, made a passionate appeal to the need to address rural economies, racial inequity, climate change, and food security in an announcement that he was seeking the position that his office posted last week. His chief competition is California Representative Jim Costa, a fellow moderate who would at least be better than Peterson.

Ricardo Salvador, director of the Food and Environment program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, calls it “nonnegotiable” that a new USDA secretary “commit to taking every possible action to combat climate change on U.S. farms.” With bipartisan affinity for the status quo, it will take an explosion of public interest in agriculture policy to hope for sweeping change. Two Black leaders—Fudge and Scott—taking premier leadership positions as congresspeople from agricultural states but urban districts, and pledging to work for all of America, would be unprecedented—and far from “boring as hell.” READ MORE

Ag interests keen to learn who will lead Farm Bill debate in US House (RadioIowa)

Scott picked as next House Ag leader (Agri-Pulse)

Reps. Meeks, Scott elected chairs of House Foreign Affairs and Agriculture committees, first Black lawmakers to lead the panels (Washington Post)

Excerpt from Agri-Pulse: Georgia Democrat David Scott cleared a major hurdle to becoming the next chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, installing new leadership for the committee as it prepares to begin work on a new farm bill.

A Democratic steering committee chose Scott over California’s Jim Costa in a 32-19 vote Tuesday evening. The two were both vying for the position vacated by current committee Chair Collin Peterson’s unsuccessful effort to secure another term in Congress. Scott — if ultimately approved by the full House Democratic caucus — will take the gavel in January.

Scott, who will be the first African American chair of the committee and the first African American from Georgia to chair any committee, announced his intent to run for the chairmanship the day after the November elections.

Originally elected in 2002, Scott has been a member of the Ag Committee throughout his time in Congress. He currently sits behind only Peterson in committee seniority among Democrats and chairs the panel’s Commodity Exchanges, Energy, and Credit Subcommittee. In his statement announcing his candidacy, Scott said he was born on a farm in South Carolina, and agriculture has been a crucial part of his life ever since. READ MORE