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Balanced Reporting. Trusted Insights.
Saturday, April 05, 2025
The Agriculture Department this morning is releasing the strategy it will follow in re-shaping programs and policies to help more farmers shift into “climate-smart” practices and to make money from doing so.
The Agriculture Department issued a climate strategy Thursday that heavily focuses on measuring the impact of climate-friendly practices, taking steps to facilitate private carbon markets and ensuring all farmers can benefit financially from addressing climate change.
The Biden administration is finally putting some detail today on its 30-by-30 plan. The president’s call for conserving 30% of U.S. land by 2030 has been raising a lot of concern across the countryside that administration officials have been pushing back on for several weeks now.
Farm and environmental groups that often disagree on ag policy are urging the Agriculture Department to prioritize climate change in conservation programs and to consider changes to crop insurance that would promote the use of cover crops and other carbon-conserving practices.
A broad coalition of farm and conservation groups says a USDA-run carbon bank should be used to test ways to establish carbon accounting guidelines, expand the use of climate-friendly farming practices and enable small-scale farms and minority producers to benefit from carbon markets.
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan says the agency can be expected to play a critical role in the Biden administration’s goals to cut greenhouse gas emissions but needs a financial boost to be in “fighting shape.”
The Environmental Protection Agency will take comment on whether it should uphold the Trump administration's action to limit California’s ability to impose its own vehicle emissions standards.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack denies that there is any effort by President Joe Biden to reduce meat consumption in order to meet the new U.S pledge to slash greenhouse gas emissions.
President Joe Biden is expected to release a new round of spending proposals this week, plus the tax increases to pay for them. Farm groups have been raising concerns for weeks about those tax proposals in the expectation they will include either the elimination of stepped-up basis or a new “transfer” tax on inherited assets.
