Solutions from the Land's Letter to Senate Democrats’ Special Committee on the Climate Crisis

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June 17, 2020

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(Solutions from the Land) In response to a call for input from the Senate Democrats’ Special Committee on the Climate Crisis for input on tools, programs, and support useful to address the impacts of severe weather and climate change on their community and business, we have constructed a response ...

While every NACSAA (North America Climate Smart Agriculture Alliance) member might not agree with every part of this letter, these areas of focus for expanded enabling policy and program recommendations have been gathered over time from the collective experience and input of NACSAA's members. We would welcome the opportunity to meet further with you or the Committee to discuss recommendations and how we might assist you in socializing these concepts and suggestions with policy makers and climate stakeholders. READ MORE

Excerpts: In the face of these local disasters, NACSAA’s farmer-led, continent-wide Alliance focuses its efforts on helping both producers and the value chain utilize climate smart agriculture (CSA) strategies to enhance the adaptive capacity of North America’s food system. Strategies range from minor adjustments in existing production to major changes in agricultural systems and best management practices, and are organized around the three CSA pillars:

Pillar One: Sustainable intensification of production and ecosystem integrity
Pillar Two: Adaptations that build resiliency
Pillar Three: Systems that allow farmers to retain and sequester carbon or reduce greenhouse gas emissions and simultaneously improve profitability

The use of a CSA framework is foundational to any agricultural climate strategy. By letting farmers lead and focusing on the economic viability of farming operations as they respond to the changing climate, policymakers can encourage win-win scenarios in which agriculture presents a solution for climate impacts while improving environmental resilience, building strong rural communities, engaging consumers, and ensuring public health and access to nutritious food.

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There is another compelling reason to act to build resiliency: many steps farmers can take in service to this, the second pillar of CSA, also work towards CSA’s third pillar of greenhouse gas reduction and mitigation. The Special Committee’s own Hon. Sheldon Whitehouse was a co-sponsor of the recently introduced Growing Climate Solutions Act, legislation which acknowledges and celebrates that “at scale,” the soil-strengthening practices that help farmers adapt to a changing climate can also “sequester carbon at as low as $10 per MtCO2e, making [these practices] the most cost effective carbon sequestration method currently available.” The Act may or may not move forward. But as a single technical certification program to promote carbon sequestration practices, it represents only the beginning for the CSA enabling polices needed to realize the full potential of agricultural solutions to climate change.

It is impossible to overstate how important land-based solutions like the ones we have discussed will be to address global climate change going forward into the future. Dr. Rattan Lal of Ohio State University – the 2020 World Food Prize Laureate, a Nobel Prize-winning expert on soil carbon management and an IPCC report contributor – predicts that properly managed soil, vegetation and animal systems worldwide could achieve 157 parts per million of CO2 drawdown per year by the next century - nearly 40% of 2018’s global atmospheric carbon levels. Enabling policies that address climate change through agriculture and forestry can unlock the huge, untapped potential for America’s farms to lead the way towards this goal through both economic and environmental sustainability.

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NACSAA urges Congress to support a carbon pricing mechanism that also provides payments to farmers for carbon fixation in their soil, with valuation contingent on science-based evidence for time length of capture (i.e. higher values for fixation 12 or more inches below the soil surface). Carbon pricing mechanisms should:

• Permit lenders to use carbon credits as part of a borrower’s cash flow statement, allowing producers to include net GHG emission credits as income when applying for loans.

• Quantify the carbon sequestration benefits of CSA practices such as manure injection to enable cover crop growth; further quantify the balance between greenhouse gas emissions and potential carbon sequestration in the agricultural sector.

Farmers also must be recognized for the full suite of services they provide to the land, including food, feed, fuel and fiber, but also climate benefits and other ecosystem services. The development of the following policies could support quantified ecosystem benefits and a voluntary, market-based, private-sector funding mechanism/incentive for ecosystem services:

• Move to adjust U.S. agricultural cost assistance (via combined international support, public good investments, payments to producers, international trade policy in a carbon-conscious future market, and other mechanisms) towards incentivizing climate adaptation and mitigation in agriculture and the broader food system. Take forward recommendations for scaling up and mainstreaming CSA, improve opportunities for leveraging further agricultural investments.

• Provide tax incentives for farmers who adopt conservation Best Management Practices (BMPs) and other emission and runoff mitigation practices on farm.

• Authorize tax incentives or federal transferable tax credits between landowners who own the land and farmers who lease the land for farming. Allow for an exchange of tax credits for climate mitigation best management practices.

• Revise the provisions of the USDA Conservation Reserve Program’s 7 CFR § 1410.63 “Permissive Uses” to clearly articulate that “the sale of carbon, water quality, or environmental credits is permitted by CCC,” instead of the current provision that indicates they “may be permitted.”

• Permit the sale of ecosystem credits generated by farmer or rancher actions on federal lease land resulting from private actions.

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In addition, an important CSA Pillar Three greenhouse gas mitigation pathway not yet discussed – which provides the co-benefits of a market for agricultural products and reduced carbon emissions built into the product’s very use – is the offsetting of fossil fuel emissions by using biomass to produce renewable energy and biobased products. Because bioenergy emits far fewer greenhouse gases than its petroleum equivalents, broader use can help mitigate climate change. Those benefits were strongly underlined by a USDA study released last year showing that emissions from corn-based ethanol are about 39 percent lower than from gasoline, which also states that when ethanol is produced at refineries powered by natural gas, greenhouse gas emissions are even lower, running around 43 percent below gasoline.

To pursue the reduction of carbon through market adjustments and production diversification opportunities to expand bio-based fuels for transportation and electricity production:

• Establish a national Low Carbon Octane Standard for light duty vehicle fuel (minimum 98 RON E25) resulting in -30% GHGs relative to baseline gasoline. Support the move to alternative fuels such as higher-level blends of ethanol (E20+) and B20 biodiesel for efficiency and air quality purposes.

• Make clear that all ethanol blends with gasoline are permitted under the Clean Air Act and require DOE to produce, within 90 days of enactment and in consultation with EPA, recommendations from the Co-Optima program on optimal liquid fuel blends for climate change, air quality, and public health.

• Uphold the integrity of the RFS to further reduce emissions in the transportation sector.

• Direct USDA to collaborate with the Department of Energy to develop regionally appropriate renewable energy sources and technologies; feed stocks for biofuels and other biomass energy sources; engines that run solely on ethanol; uses for distillers’ grain; and production of fuels and fertilizers from renewable energy sources.

• Expand operational renewable natural gas production and methane recovery (either direct as scrubbed biogas to pipeline quality or generation of electricity) from livestock operations, crop production and other industries which produce organic waste. Mechanisms available include making further funding and educational opportunities available through EPA/USDA’s AgSTAR program, enabling ag/energy industry partnerships and adding compliance targets for organic waste to renewable energy portfolio standard laws. READ MORE

Farming to Reverse Climate Change & Regenerative Agriculture (Green America)

Smart Farms of the Future: Making Bioenergy Crops More Environmentally Friendly (Berkeley Lab)