The U.S. Department of Agriculture is funding projects to create new markets and revenue streams for “climate-smart” practices in farming, including beef production. Photo courtesy of Preston Keres, USDA.

By Allison Winter
Indiana Capital Chronicle

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration is spending more than $3 billion to cultivate more American farmers and forest landowners as partners to mitigate climate change — even while some Republicans on Capitol Hill try to stop the program entirely.

The administration launched a new farm program, Partnerships for Climate Smart Commodities, this year. It is the USDA’s largest-ever investment in climate-smart agriculture and part of a larger effort to advance the administration’s priority of addressing climate change.

Agriculture Department officials say they hope the program will be transformational and help create markets that could eventually bring “climate-smart” products to grocery shelves.

The program disburses grants for pilot programs that will pay landowners to try new practices to improve the carbon footprint of their operations — with a special focus to recruit traditionally underserved landowners to participate.

But Republican lawmakers have criticized the program — both for its emphasis on climate change and because of its funding source. Lawmakers have introduced bills to stop the program, and the GOP-controlled House Appropriations Committee voted to block spending for it next year.

Meanwhile, the Agriculture Department has been moving forward steadily, approving grants and rolling out the $3.1 billion in projects, 141 of them in total, some of which have funding from other sources as well.

The new initiative has won support from many agriculture, farm cooperative, forestry and research groups, including the National Farmers Union and the American Farm Bureau Federation. It has participants from major universities and farm corporations.

USDA estimates the program will reach more than 60,000 farms, encompassing more than 25 million acres of working lands. The agency’s preliminary estimates are that it will provide a reduction of over 50,000 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent. Climate activists say they hope the agency releases data as the projects roll out to show if those estimates become a reality.

Republican critics of the bill say the Biden administration overstepped its authority when it created the climate program and used the USDA’s financing institution, the Commodity Credit Corporation, to pay for it.

The CCC began during the Great Depression as a bailout program for cotton farmers. Over the years, Congress and presidential administrations have directed CCC to fund an increasingly broad array of programs, including farm bill programs, export and commodity programs, conservation and disaster assistance.

Since the Truman administration, the CCC has essentially become USDA’s bank and served as the primary financing source for many farm bill programs, including commodity supports and conservation programs.

The broad mandate and borrowing authority allow USDA to carry out “almost any operation required to meet the objectives of supporting U.S. agriculture,” according to an analysis from the Congressional Research Service, a nonpartisan research group within the Library of Congress.

The Trump administration directed $28 billion in aid to farmers in 2018-2019, when U.S. exports of agricultural goods dropped significantly in response to tariff increases.

USDA spent another $20 billion from the CCC in 2020 for producers who had been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. In total, the Trump administration authorized over $51 billion from the CCC between 2018 and 2020, according to an analysis by the current USDA.

While some Republicans dislike the Biden administration’s use of the fund, the requests to participate in the Climate Smart Agriculture Program demonstrate the idea has some traction.

Initially USDA announced it would invest $1 billion in the partnerships but tripled its commitment because of the overwhelming requests for funding. USDA officials say they received more than 1,000 proposals from more than 500 groups — which would have totaled over $20 billion if they had funded them all.

They settled on $3.1 billion in grants to universities, agribusiness groups and nonprofits that will run climate projects. Many of the programs will help connect farmers or landowners with consultants or land managers that can help them make environmental plans and pay them to implement practices like cover crops, no-till farming or planting trees. Programs across the country will enroll farmers and collect data.

The Climate Smart Partnerships are not a carbon bank or certification process — at least not yet. But many of them are working on ways to market climate-smart products.

Private landowners are responsible for 39% of the nation’s forests but fewer than 13 percent of them have a land management plan, according to the American Forest Foundation.