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Federal Government’s $20 Billion Embrace of ‘Climate Smart’ Farming [1]
['Linda Qiu']
Date: 2022-09-26
“For us, really the reason to do it was less labor and equipment,” he said. With the increase in available funding, Mr. Scott hopes to apply for another round to expand the cover crops.
On her organic vegetable farm in Pennsylvania, Hannah Smith Brubaker has converted cornfields into pastures; planted rows of trees known as windbreaks to control erosion and protect against high gusts; and constructed grass waterways or channels seeded with vegetation to collect water.
“We’ve had drought so bad this year,” she said. “And if we didn’t have some of these conservation practices installed, I don’t know what we would do. We might just be closing up shop because our soil would be so dry.”
Their experiences are reflected in the data. A March report from the Agriculture Department assessing the effect of its conservation programs over a decade found that these practices helped reduce water erosion by 76 million tons and wind erosion by 94 million tons per year. Average annual fuel use also decreased by 110 million gallons of diesel, equivalent to 1.2 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions.
Still, experts cautioned that to truly make a dent in agricultural emissions, the programs needed to discourage practices with noted harms and incentivize farming and ranching practices that have proven consequences.
Ms. Welsh of the Center for Strategic and International Studies noted that the existing programs and the new grants did not do enough to directly address a major source of emissions from farming: fertilizers. They release nitrous oxide, a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
Encouraging more precise fertilizer application and incentivizing more sustainable manufacturing processes “would have benefits for both climate change and also benefits producers, given the impact of Russia’s war on Ukraine and the high price of fertilizers right now,” she said.
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[1] Url:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/26/us/politics/climate-smart-farming-agriculture-department.html?partner=slack&smid=sl-share
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