During his first seven months in office, President BidenJoe Biden Progressives hit back after moderates targeted Pelosi John Kerry expresses optimism about the upcoming climate summit. Biden’s Justice Red Queen: How he destroyed both the investigation and the reputation of border officers MORE has clearly indicated its intention to view climate change as a serious threat to the country and the world, and recently set a goal reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by at least half by 2030.

American farmers have the opportunity to proactively participate in reducing the threat of climate change through a number of efforts, such as carbon sequestration in soils using conservative agricultural practices, reducing or capturing methane emissions from livestock, taking measures to use nitrogen fertilizers more efficiently to reduce nitrous oxide emissions, reducing emissions by improving their energy efficiency on the farm, and contribute to the production of renewable energy. In his address to a joint session of Congress on April 28, President specifically mentioned pay farmers to plant cover crops to reduce net carbon dioxide emissions, as part of its draft US Jobs Plan.

In many ways, farmers are particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, but they are also strategically positioned to be part of the solution. As we described in a Newly published guidance note which was commissioned by the Farm Journal Foundation, US agriculture is estimated by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to directly generate about 10 percent of the greenhouse gases emitted by the US economy. However, with the right incentives, we believe that farmers can turn the agricultural sector into a net carbon sink and take important steps to mitigate climate change.

In the article, we identify a range of actions that farmers can adopt to facilitate agriculture’s transition to a position of net carbon sink, encompassing changes in cropping practices, fertilizer application, livestock feeding practices, wider adoption of methane digesters to convert animal and food waste into renewable energy, improving energy efficiency in agriculture operations, installing wind turbines or solar panels to produce renewable energy on the farm and use harvest waste or dedicated biomass crops to create biofuels.

The federal government has already put in place a range of policies and programs that offer technical assistance, cost-shared funding, and / or low-interest loans to help farmers plan and implement new climate-smart farming practices on their farms. The programs are primarily administered by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and, to a lesser extent, by the United States Department of Energy (USDOE). These include two major “working land†programs, the Environmental quality incentive program (EQIP) and the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP), which have been awarded $ 2.55 billion in the mandatory funding for fiscal year 2021 in the 2018 Farm Bill to provide shared-cost assistance to farmers to adopt new conservation practices as part of their farming activities.

We know from research that these programs are very effective in encouraging new practices that sequester carbon or otherwise reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In 2018, a to study published by the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service estimated that acres of land cultivated under CSP contracts retained more than 76 million pounds of soil organic carbon. In addition, we know that a considerable amount of carbon is also sequestered when land is removed for long periods of time, such as the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), under which farmers refrain from cultivating environmentally sensitive land. under contracts of 10 to 15 years. CRP land is typically planted with grass, legumes, herbaceous plants or trees, and / or converted to wildlife habitat or wetlands, all of which contribute to the carbon content of the soil. A recent study by soil carbon content in Iowa’s CRP fields have seen an average increase of almost 7 percentage points over a nine-year period.

Many innovative practices that help producers reduce emissions on livestock farms are also eligible for support under the EQIP or CSP, such as rotational grazing and manure management. In the 2017 Census of Agriculture, there were 686 farms who said they have methane digesters that convert animal waste into electricity for on-farm use, a 28 percent increase from the previous census in 2012. Farmers can get planning assistance for installing ‘USDA / USDOE digestion equipment. AgStar Program, and grants or guaranteed loans under the Rural Energy for America (REAP) program managed by the USDA. REAP is also helping with the adoption of solar panels or wind turbines, which are also eligible for production tax credits at the federal level.

We believe the federal government has an adequate range of programs, as described above, to help farmers adopt climate-smart farming practices, but funding levels need to be significantly increased. On average, between 2000 and 2010, only about 40 percent of projects proposed under the EQIP have actually been funded.

In addition, Congress must promulgate the Growing Climate Solutions Act, to enable USDA to facilitate the emergence of private sector environmental services and carbon markets, and provide increased funding for research to develop more cost-effective ways to measure carbon and reduce gas emissions Greenhouse effect.

Dr. Stephanie Mercier is an Economist and Senior Policy Advisor at the Farm Journal Foundation. Dr John Reilly is Co-Director Emeritus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change..