The USDA scheme is stuck in an awkward place. It is supposed to reduce emissions but seeks to achieve that in a way that keeps farmers on board and doesn’t fundamentally change the goods they produce.
A Billion-Dollar Plan to Fix Farm Emissions Might Make Things Worse
AGRICULTURE IS A big source of emissions. In the US, about 10 percent of greenhouse gases come from livestock or crops—and for a long time, agriculture has lagged behind other sectors when it comes to cutting its carbon footprint. Since 1990, total emissions from agriculture have risen by 7 percent, while emissions from sectors like electricity generation and buildings have declined.
There’s a simple reason for this: Cutting emissions from agriculture is really hard. It’s not like the energy industry, which has readily available low-carbon electricity in the form of renewables. Reducing agriculture’s impact means making tough decisions about what gets farmed and how, and dealing with the notoriously tricky science of making sure carbon stays in the ground rather than being released into the atmosphere.
The US has started getting to grips with these tough decisions. President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act included $20 billion to help farmers tackle the climate crisis. And in February 2022 the US Department of Agriculture announced $3.1 billion in funding through a scheme called Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities (PCSC). The money was intended to fund projects that help farmers adopt more environmentally friendly ways of farming and create a market for what the USDA calls “climate-smart” crops and livestock.
According to the USDA, its plan has the potential to sequester 60 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents—the same as removing 12 million gasoline-powered cars from roads for one year. But some scientists are worried that the PSCS approach is the wrong kind of climate intervention. The government could be channeling billions of dollars to projects that are of uncertain benefit in terms of emissions—or, worse, actually end up increasing overall levels of greenhouse gases.
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https://www.wired.com/story/usda-climate-smart-agriculture/
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