Growing Returns

To slow climate change, we must measure livestock methane accurately

By Mallory Honan / Bio / Published: May 6, 2025

Reducing methane emissions, a climate super-pollutant, can lessen rates of warming within decades. Since livestock farming is one of the biggest emitters of that methane gas, with enteric methane from cow burps alone contributing about a third of all human-caused methane emissions each year, lowering it can have a big impact.

To reduce livestock emissions, we first have to know where we’re starting. That requires accurate and validated measurement, but measuring methane from livestock isn’t simple — how we do it matters. These are the most important considerations.

Posted in Agriculture / Tagged agriculture, climate change, climate-smart agriculture, enteric methane, methane, methane emissions, research | Leave a comment

Celebrating the groundbreaking of a natural infrastructure project to combat flooding in North Carolina

By Michelle Lovejoy / Published: March 28, 2025

Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) joined North Carolina’s Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) at a groundbreaking event today to celebrate the progress of a new and significant natural infrastructure pilot project.

The Stoney Creek pilot project is an innovative approach to utilizing natural infrastructure and nature’s processes to address flood risk in the City of Goldsboro and in the greater area of Wayne County, North Carolina. Moreover, it is a major step forward in advancing community flood resilience across the entire state.

Posted in Climate Resilience / Tagged agriculture, flood resilience, flooding, hurricane, resilience | Comments are closed

Farmers need support to survive this economic squeeze

By Maggie Monast / Bio / Twitter profile / Published: March 27, 2025

In conversations with farmers in recent months, one word keeps coming up to describe their economic reality: “squeeze.” High farm input costs and loan interest rates are making it more expensive for farmers to grow crops. At the same time, low commodity prices mean they earn less money for the crops they grow. Farmers are caught in the middle of a bad deal with many asking whether it is even worth it to farm this year.

Farmers are facing this dilemma while also navigating additional disruptions and uncertainty. Federal funds have been frozen or canceled, putting farmers with existing contracts at risk after they’ve already invested their own money with the expectation that government funding would cover the remaining cost of farm improvements. Tariffs create another layer of price uncertainty and open the door for other countries to gain a competitive advantage in global markets. On top of this, farmers in several regions have experienced damage from extreme weather events, making their financial situation even more fraught.

Farmers are getting squeezed, and this makes it harder or even impossible for them to position their businesses for long-term success. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Posted in Agriculture / Tagged agricultural finance, farm finance, financial resilience | Comments are closed

Three ways to improve soil carbon measurement

By Jocelyn Lavallee / Bio / Published: March 24, 2025

Measuring soil carbon accurately is essential for ensuring confidence in large-scale efforts to improve soil health, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and support initiatives like carbon credit programs.

But determining how much organic carbon is stored in soil from decomposed plants can be a challenge, leading to a well-known problem: different soil testing labs can give different numbers for the same soil.

Posted in Uncategorized / Tagged Climate, edf study, lab, measurments, science, Soil carbon | Comments are closed

Animal health is key to healthy people and planet

By Peri Rosenstein / Published: March 13, 2025

Maintaining animal health isn’t only an essential practice for livestock farming, though any farmer or rancher will agree that’s true. It’s also a way to lower the methane intensity of the meat and dairy produced by livestock and improve health and livelihoods for people, which is particularly important for smallholder farmers in low-income countries.

Livestock farming contributes more than one-third of human-caused methane emissions, a powerful super-pollutant responsible for much of the additional warming and extreme weather the world is facing. At the same time, animal agriculture both provides critical nutrition and supports the livelihoods of millions of families, benefits that are now at risk due to heatwaves, droughts and other climate impacts.

Posted in Uncategorized / Tagged agricultural methane, agriculture, animal agriculture, farmers, food production, methane, resilience | Comments are closed

Without financing solutions, farmers have to leave money — and environmental benefits — on the table

By Guest Author / Published: March 11, 2025

This op-ed was originally published in Hoard’s Dairyman. Since its initial publication, the financial uncertainty for farmers engaging in conservation practices has grown substantially. Ongoing trade negotiations, tariffs and blocked funding for existing U.S. Department of Agriculture contracts for conservation expenses and the uncertainty of future funding for conservation programs intensify the financial challenges faced by dairy farmers.

Dairy farmers are already part of a high-risk industry — the experience shared below shows how difficult it can be to align funding opportunities with farms’ financial needs. Now, farmers are being left to absorb that risk with less support. To continue producing food for their communities and responsibly stewarding natural resources, farmers will need more flexibility from financial institutions and greater investments from stakeholders advancing sustainable agriculture.

By Alice Crothers

Posted in Uncategorized / Tagged agriculture, climate resilience, farm finance, farmers, farming, farms, food, food production, food security, sustainability | Comments are closed

Measuring soil carbon is economically feasible

By Emily Oldfield / Published: January 21, 2025

Doug Peterson, State Soil Health Conservationist with USDA, displays soil sample from a field that uses cover crops.
Credit: Kyle Spradley, MU College of Agriculture, Food & Natural Resources

There’s widespread consensus that climate smart agricultural practices like cover cropping, reduced and no-tillage and crop diversification can help farmers adapt to climate change and help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Yet confidence in the impacts of these practices as a climate solution has been undermined by reliance on models to determine how much carbon has been accrued or retained in soils.

Soil organic carbon accounting and crediting relies on models because of the belief that direct measurement is too costly and cannot provide a practical solution to any large-scale measurement, monitoring, reporting and verification (MMRV) program for tracking soil carbon outcomes.

But that assumption may be wrong. Working with a team of researchers from the University of Illinois and Yale School of the Environment, Environmental Defense Fund found that a rigorous approach to soil carbon quantification that relies on taking soil samples before and after practice adoption across a large number of farm fields is economically feasible.

Posted in Agriculture / Tagged carbon, economics, measurement, soil | Comments are closed

The Regenerative Agriculture Financing Program expands in its second year

By Maggie Monast / Bio / Twitter profile / Published: December 18, 2024

A large field of soybean crop.

The Regenerative Agriculture Finance Program, also known as RAF, was launched in January 2022 by Farmers Business Network in collaboration with Environmental Defense Fund. The pilot year of the RAF program included 48 corn, wheat and soybean farmers seeking access to lower interest rates on operating loans by achieving standards for soil health and nitrogen fertilizer management practices.

When launched, the RAF program quickly became Farmers Business Network’s fastest selling financial product ever. Of the participating growers who completed data collection, 83% met the environmental standards and received a rebate payment equal to 0.5% of their loan interest rate.

The success of the pilot year of the RAF encouraged Farmers Business Network to expand the program. Learn more about the 2023 program results, as well as new opportunities and challenges for the RAF.

Posted in Uncategorized / Tagged agricultural finance, farm finance, regenerative agriculture | Comments are closed

We can feed a growing population while shrinking fertilizer pollution. Here’s how.

By Alison Eagle / Bio / Published: December 18, 2024

Farmers must estimate how much fertilizer and other inputs their crop will need in the face of increased weather variability.

Nitrous oxide might not make the news like carbon dioxide, but it’s a powerful hidden force behind the extreme, climate-driven weather we’re experiencing. This super-pollutant is the third most significant greenhouse gas, with a warming impact almost 300 times greater than carbon dioxide. Lowering it is essential for avoiding the most dangerous climate impacts.

The newly released “Global Nitrous Oxide Assessment” confirms a sobering reality: atmospheric concentrations of the gas are rising faster than previously anticipated. The majority of nitrous oxide emissions come from synthetic fertilizer and manure. Yet nitrogen applications are also essential for producing the crops that feed a growing population.

We don’t have to choose between food security or climate stability. We can and must support farmers in achieving both priorities.

Reducing nitrous oxide emissions isn’t just possible — it’s within reach.

A combination of existing strategies could slash global nitrous oxide emissions by over 40%, but scaling these solutions requires commitment and innovation, but scaling these solutions requires commitment and innovation.

Posted in Climate Resilience / Tagged environmental, farmers, global carbon emissions, global warming, nitrous oxide | Comments are closed

Four takeaways from a year of global action on food, agriculture and climate

By Jennifer Chow / Bio / Published: December 16, 2024

Global leaders increasingly recognize that agriculture and food systems must be part of solutions to the climate crisis. From the first Food Systems Pavilion at a UN climate conference in 2022, to 160 countries recognizing food and agriculture as a climate imperative in 2023, food advocates came into the 2024 UN climate conference, COP29, with wind in our sails. We made progress, but the world needs to do more — and quickly.

As we close out the year and look ahead to COP30 in late 2025, significantly more work remains to ensure farmers, fishers and ranchers can feed a growing population and lower climate pollution from food systems.

Here are four reflections from EDF and our partners about the progress made this year and the urgent work that remains to make farms and food systems more resilient, sustainable and equitable.

Posted in Climate Resilience / Tagged agriculture, Climate, COP29, food | Read 1 Response