Lawmakers from Both Parties Call for Investment in Ag as a Climate Solution

August 06, 2021

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(North America Climate Smart Agriculture Alliance) Thirty lawmakers from both houses of Congress have written a letter urging House and Senate leadership to support an historic, long-term investment in farmers, ranchers and rural communities as a part of upcoming infrastructure and climate change legislation.

Reps. Chellie Pingree (D-ME) and Abigail Spanberger (D-NJ), and Sens. Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Martin Heinrich (D-NM) led the lawmakers signing the letter. Pingree and Heinrich are the authors of the Agriculture Resilience Act, legislation they say empowers farmers with the tools and resources needed to improve soil health, sequester carbon, reduce emissions, enhance their resilience, and tap into new market opportunities. Spanberger and Booker are the authors of the Climate Stewardship Act, a climate change bill focused on voluntary farm and ranch conservation practices, massive reforestation and wetlands restoration.

The lawmakers urged congressional leadership to use the two bills as a roadmap for the infrastructure package to leverage new and existing programs at the USDA to achieve net-zero emissions from U.S. agriculture in the coming decades. READ MORE

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SfL Ohio Report Presages USDA ‘Build Back Better’ Initiative (Solutions from the Land)

Carbon credits: ‘Farms are where the land is' -- Those who work and live on the land must be part of such efforts to reduce carbon. (Delta Farm Press)

Circular Agriculture Can Boost Yields, Reduce Sector’s Environmental Impact (Solutions from the Land)

A Cheap, Low-Tech Method That Could Slash Farm Carbon Emissions -- “This is an incredibly exciting technology…and, frankly, we could deploy this very quickly.” (Mother Jones)

Panelists Discuss More Sustainable Ways to Farm at Climate Week NYC (Our Daily Planet)

Rock dust could put a drain on atmospheric carbon — will this technology work? (The Hill)

Is Hemp The Answer To Our Global Deforestation Crisis? (Green Queen)

Excerpt from Mother Jones: The hemp field trial is just one of the projects being led by Ben Houlton, dean of Cornell’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. For the last two years, he and colleagues at the Working Lands Innovation Center, a research consortium based at the University of California, Davis, have been testing various soil amendments that grab carbon from the air and trap it below ground. They’ve tested biochar, manure, and rock dust used on the New York land and California farm plots, and so far, the most effective soil treatment is basalt pulverized into dust.

“As far as I can tell,” says Houlton, “ours is the largest-scale project of its kind, using this intensive sort of scientific approach.”

The hemp field experiments go beyond testing which amendments increase yields and sequester carbon and examine how much rock dust should be applied for best results. Some sections got 20 tons of rock dust per acre, while others got 40, allowing the researchers to get a more fine-tuned picture of the relationship between the dust, the soil, and the crops. The research adds to a growing body of scientific work showing the potential for these soil amendments to become one of the many measures needed to help solve our climate crisis. READ MORE