Leah Douglas
Thu, April 11, 2024
FILE PHOTO: Farm workers plant Novavine drought-resistant grapevines in Woodland
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Joe Biden's administration is offering farmers money for adopting practices that store carbon in the soil to fight climate change, but Reuters interviews with soil science experts and a review of U.S. Department of Agriculture research indicate doubt that the approach will be effective.
Farm practices like planting cover crops and reducing farmland tilling are key to the USDA's plan for slashing agriculture's 10% contribution to U.S. greenhouse gas emissions as the U.S. pursues net-zero by 2050. Ethanol producers also hope those practices will help them secure lucrative tax credits for sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) passed in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).
But the farming techniques, which will receive an extra funding boost from Biden's signature climate law, may not permanently sequester much atmospheric carbon in the soil, according to five soil scientists and researchers who spoke to Reuters about the current science.
Four other soil scientists, and the USDA, said the practices can store various amounts of soil carbon, but circumstances will dictate how much and for how long.
The White House referred Reuters to the USDA for comment.
A USDA spokesperson said "the adoption and persistent use of no-till and cover crops are key for the sequestration of carbon on working croplands."
All the experts interviewed by Reuters agreed that no-till and cover crops can have significant environmental benefits such as preventing soil erosion and increasing biodiversity. Yet five of them expressed skepticism about tying climate policy and public money to the practices.
"Will it help with climate adaptation? Absolutely. Should it serve as an offset for more permanent and long-lived pollutants? Absolutely not," said Daniel Rath, an agricultural soil carbon scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
The USDA has spent $1.3 billion in financial assistance to farmers for planting and managing cover crops and $224 million for implementing no-or reduced-till since 2014, according to agency data. That figure is miniscule compared to total USDA spending, but does amount to about 8% of its farm conservation spending in that period.
"If we really want to offset or mitigate climate change, we need to think about different systems," said Humberto Blanco, an agronomy professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. "We need to think about more aggressive strategies."
IT ALL DEPENDS
Adoption of cover crops and no-till has risen in the past decade; now, 11% of farms plant cover crops and about 40% use minimal or no tilling, according to the most recent USDA agricultural census.
Under the right conditions, planting cover crops and reducing tilling can be positive for the climate, scientists told Reuters.
"If a farmer is using cover crops and getting good growth in the fall and spring, and they’re doing minimal tillage, on most soils, they’re going to add soil carbon over time," said Robert Myers, a professor at the University of Missouri and regional director of extension programs at a USDA research site.
A USDA spokesperson said the benefits largely depend on factors like growing climate, soil type, crop rotation, and other factors.
Five other experts told Reuters that no-till farming commonly results in a higher concentration of carbon in the soil surface but a decrease deeper in the soil profile, resulting in a net zero gain.
Seven experts said the climate benefits of no-till and cover crop techniques can be lessened or reversed if farmers plow their fields again.
"Even if you do build up some extra carbon under reduced tillage, if you then do a traditional plowing, the evidence seems to be that you quite quickly lose the carbon that you’ve been building up," said David Powlson, senior fellow at Rothamsted Research, an agricultural research institution.
Only 21% of farmers report using no-till continuously, according to the 2022 farm census, and about a third alternate reduced tilling with conventional tilling, showed a 2018 USDA report.
A USDA standards document for no-till says loss of carbon in the soil is directly tied to the amount and intensity of the tilling, and other factors like soil moisture and temperature.
As for the SAF tax credit, the Treasury Department is expected to finalize details in coming weeks. The $1.25 per gallon credit is aimed at producers who prove their fuel can cut emissions 50% from those of straight jet fuel.
The program will likely require ethanol producers to source corn from farmers using cover crops, reduced tilling, or efficient fertilizer application, sources told Reuters.
The USDA declined to comment on what the fertilizer application would entail.
The ethanol industry hopes to account for a significant portion of the 35 billion gallons of SAF the Biden administration has pledged to produce by 2050.
The IRA includes some $19.5 billion for farm climate programs over 10 years, and in 2023, about $52.5 million of that money went to cover crops and no-till.
(Reporting by Leah Douglas; Editing by David Gregorio)
US Betting on Energy Shift to Stem Decades of Disappearing Farms
Kim Chipman, Michael Hirtzer and Tarso Veloso
Thu, April 11, 2024
(Bloomberg) -- The US is betting the transition to cleaner energy combined with massive infrastructure investments will reverse a persistent decline in family farms, creating new revenue opportunities for growers while boosting their ability to compete overseas.
More than half a million farms across America’s landscape have vanished over the last four decades as policies favored consolidation. While the resulting industrial heft has bolstered the US’s status as an agriculture juggernaut feeding the world, it’s wreaked havoc on smaller and mid-sized producers and the rural economies that rely on them.
But a revival is under way, according to US Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. “We have to change the direction, otherwise in 40 years we will be saying we lost another 500 million acres,” he said in an interview Tuesday at Bloomberg’s Chicago office.
His agency is devoting tens of billions of dollars to promote climate-friendly farm practices as the world races to decarbonize, dealing with everything from fertilizers to grazing methods. The aim is to lower the greenhouse gas emissions of farming, and making growers eligible to take part in potentially lucrative new markets like crop-based sustainable aviation fuel.
Initiatives include enabling farms to profit by monetizing their excess renewable electricity, as well as helping them tap into new markets to sell into, including schools and farmer markets. The USDA also is devoting funds to create more robust export opportunities for US producers in regions such as Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America.
Read More: Number of Farms in America Is Shrinking as Producers Get Older
“This is allowing farmers to say to the next generation: ‘You can be entrepreneurial and make a difference in the world,’” he said.
The opportunity to profit from selling more into local and regional food systems is significant. While farmers may get around 15-21 cents of a dollar spent at the grocery store, they can get as much as 75 cents at a farmers market or other venues in which growers work directly with consumers, Vilsack said.
Yet uncertainty is hanging over whether US farmers can shrink their carbon footprint fast enough to be competitive with grains and oilseeds from other nations, as well as with other pathways for making high-value products like sustainable aviation fuel, or SAF.
In January, the world’s first plant using ethanol of all types to make SAF was unveiled in Georgia. A thousand miles north in Iowa, the country’s biggest producer of corn-based ethanol, farmers and biofuel makers said the opening was a wake-up call to move faster to decarbonize to compete with ethanol from Brazil.
Vilsack, a former Democratic governor of Iowa, predicts a “rapid acceleration” in crop-based SAF investment after the Biden administration releases long-awaited details on federal tax credits aimed at setting off a surge in American production of lower-emitting airplane fuel. The update of a US tool used to calculate greenhouse gases from the transportation and energy industries is expected within a few weeks, Vilsack said.
While the government’s strategy is focused on strengthening the small farmer and rural communities, Vilsack expects the administration’s policies to also bolster the US’s position in world markets. America over the past decade lost its status as the top global shipper of corn and soybeans to Brazil.
Once the US fixes its roads and bridges, and the rail and port systems work more efficiently, America will be able to reclaim its infrastructure advantage, he said. President Joe Biden’s $1 trillion infrastructure law, passed in 2021, will “change the game on exports,” Vilsack said.
While he declined to comment directly on this year’s elections, Vilsack said he sees little risk in a new administration coming in and possibly rolling back efforts to help rural America, as the shift toward clean energy will be hard to stop.
He said farmers 10 years ago would have said “no thank you” to climate-smart programs, but now farm groups and growers are increasingly understanding the benefits.
Changing Mindset
“It’s an unlimited entrepreneurial opportunity to get out of the ‘Get Big or Get Out’ mindset,” he said. The phrase is a reference to the mantra of Earl Butz, agriculture chief under presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, which was also taken up by President Donald Trump’s farm chief Sonny Perdue.
“Now the rest can get entrepreneurial,” Vilsack said. “They can have two or three income streams and may not have to work that second job.”
Vilsack, who also served as agriculture chief under Barack Obama and is the second-longest serving USDA secretary in US history, said his approach is not about taking on crop-handling behemoths like Cargill Inc. and Archer-Daniels-Midland Co.
“This is about saying we ought to be able to create more options, and then the farmer can make the decision about what is best for his or her operation,” he said. “That’s the beauty of this — it complements, it doesn’t compete.”
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