No one has more to lose — or gain — from our climate crisis than farmers.

After all, farmers depend upon mother nature for their survival, and a changing climate could mean more rain in some places, less rain in others, and severe weather in general.

Today, farmers contribute a relatively small share of America's greenhouse gas emissions — not more than 8 percent — and could easily offset their own emissions and provide carbon offsets to other industries. Overall, experts estimate that agriculture could help reduce America's greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent.

Here's how.

Farmers could use fertilizers with greater precision, reducing emissions of nitrous oxide. Farmers could also cap their animal waste lagoons to capture and burn methane (which is 21 times as potent as carbon dioxide) and could change what they feed their animals to reduce enteric fermentation (this is getting a little personal for the Ruminant).

Capping and burning the methane emitted from 7,000 swine and dairy lagoons could generate enough electricity to annually power 500,000 homes.

As the Ruminant like to say, smells like money.

Farmers could also store more carbon in the soil by changing the way thet till the soil and by restoring grasslands, wetlands and forests. And, farmers could produce ethanol in ways that further reduces greenhouse gas emissions.

Generating carbon offsets to sell to other industries could also boost the bottom line: If a ton of carbon were worth $20 a ton (instead of $4 a ton), farmers could generate anywhere from $5 to $15 billion in new income by simply storing more carbon in the soil, according to experts at Kansas State.

No wonder former Senators Bob Dole and Tom Daschle have called for a mandatory cap on carbon emissions that would allow farmers to sell their offsets.

The next Farm Bill should help our farmers get ready for a carbon cap by providing new funds to "set their carbon baselines" — to measure current emissions — and to accelerate ways that third parties can certify greenhouse gas reductions.

A carbon market could turn straw into gold in more ways than one.