Giving Compass' Take:
- Investments are going toward 'climate-smart practices,' but there is ambiguity around the effectiveness of these initiatives.
- How can donor capital supplement funding for existing practices in agriculture that address the climate crisis?
- Read about impact investing for climate-smart agriculture.
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The U.S. Department of Agriculture recently detailed a total US$3.1 billion investment across 141 projects under its Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities. But there is contention around the USDA’s climate-smart approach about its effectiveness in mitigating the climate crisis and making agriculture more sustainable.
The Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities is a funding opportunity to support agricultural initiatives that reduce greenhouse gas emissions or sequester carbon. The first 70 projects will bring financial and technical assistance to implement climate-smart practices, including cover cropping, no-till farming, enhanced efficiency fertilizers, and wetland or forest buffers. They will also monitor and quantify greenhouse gas targets and develop climate-smart markets.
Projects include US$95 million to establish and monitor climate-smart markets in the Midwest, led by the Iowa Soybean Association; US$45 million to implement regenerative practices on California almond farms, led by Blue Diamond Growers; US$60 million for sequestering carbon in beef and feed production, with Tyson Foods, Inc as the major partner; and US$60 million to develop agroforestry commodity markets, guided by The Nature Conservancy.
“The projects are putting an emphasis on building soil health and reducing emissions,” Director of Rural Strategies and Climate Change at the Institute for Agriculture & Trade Policy (IATP) Ben Lilliston tells Food Tank. “This is something the USDA has not historically done.”
In the second phase of funding, announced in December, another US$325 million will specifically target young and underserved producers, as well as over 30 minority-serving institutions and Historically Black College and Universities (HBCU).
In total, the projects are expected to reach more than 25 million acres of working land and store 60 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent into the ground–analogous to taking 12 million cars off the road this year.
Read the full article about climate-smart agriculture by Shelley Rose at Food Tank.