There\u2019s a misconception that a carbon bank is all about incentivizing soil carbon sequestration. In reality, sequestration in agricultural soils, including through the use of practices like conservation tillage and cover crops, is only a small part of the climate potential in the agriculture and forestry sectors. Both sectors also have plenty of opportunities to directly reduce emissions.<\/p>\n
A USDA-led carbon bank can and should direct public and private funding toward the most effective and certain climate solutions. These include protecting existing carbon-rich forests, grasslands, wetlands and peatlands from land conversion and reducing direct emissions of methane from manure management and enteric fermentation and nitrous oxide from excess fertilizer. This funding prioritization will reduce climate risk, build climate resilience and build public confidence in USDA\u2019s climate policies.<\/p>\n
2. Address financial barriers to climate-smart practice adoption.<\/strong><\/p>\n Climate-smart practices can have expensive upfront costs or long pay-off periods, making it risky for farmers and forest owners to invest in them when voluntary carbon markets are uncertain. A USDA carbon bank should address these uncertainties, such as by compensating early adopters or providing a price floor for carbon payments.<\/p>\n Carbon bank funding should also seek to address gaps in the voluntary marketplace, for example by incentivizing practices that provide important climate benefits but don\u2019t provide an easily measurable mitigation or sequestration benefit to sell as a carbon credit. Practices that increase wildfire resilience could fall into this category.<\/p>\n We can\u2019t expect existing farm bill conservation programs to cover these important new investments. Oversubscribed and without an explicit focus on climate change mitigation and adaptation, farm bill programs are already stretched to the limit. Instead, carbon bank funding requires a fresh infusion of resources and a laser focus on the most effective climate practices.<\/p>\n 3. Build confidence in carbon markets.<\/strong><\/p>\n Credible and consistent guidelines for measuring, monitoring and verifying the climate impacts of conservation practices and managing for uncertainty will be essential for buyers and sellers to be able to compare credits generated under different credit protocols and to know that carbon credits represent true climate benefits.<\/p>\n Many conservation practices like fertilizer optimization already have well-documented climate benefits and economical, technologically feasible ways to measure progress<\/a> against a baseline. Other practices like applying compost to row crops or pasture will require additional research and guidance to verify and quantify climate benefits under various conditions. That\u2019s okay and expected.<\/p>\n USDA\u2019s scientists are perfectly positioned to help create guidelines, in consultation with other relevant agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency, for practices where there is scientific consensus on climate impact. USDA should also support research by internal and external researchers to close knowledge gaps about the climate impacts of other practices.<\/p>\n4 ways that USDA can leverage the power of farms and forests to mitigate and adapt to climate change <\/a><\/span>Share on X<\/a><\/span>\n 4. Increase access to carbon markets.<\/strong><\/p>\n A carbon bank should increase equitable access to agricultural carbon markets. Large-scale farm and forest operations have an inherent advantage in accessing carbon markets because they have better access to capital markets that allow them to make the investments necessary to generate credits more profitably and to afford credit verification costs.<\/p>\n Black, Indigenous and producers of color often have less capital because of a legacy of being denied credit, forced removal and USDA discrimination that made it harder to purchase or keep their land. USDA must engage with producers of color to ensure they have access to credit, capital and an aggregation process that benefits them, as well as to identify and implement other ways to make market access equitable.<\/p>\n If USDA takes on the role of aggregator, it could combine contributions, particularly those from smaller operations, at regional scales. This approach would have important benefits for both equity and market integrity. First, bundling would allow small and mid-size farms and forests to participate in voluntary markets where buyers want credits equivalent to large amounts of carbon dioxide. Second, it would enable USDA to accumulate \u201cbuffer credits\u201d that are set aside to mitigate the risk of climate gains being undone by practice changes or environmental events like wildfires and floods.<\/p>\n Next steps for USDA and Congress<\/strong><\/p>\n USDA should start to implement pilot projects that remove barriers to climate-smart practice adoption and build confidence in and increase access to voluntary markets.<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/growingreturns\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/52\/files\/2021\/05\/USDA-cover-crop-flickr-2-1024x680.jpg\")
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