Agricultural Conservation Programs and Climate Change

Key Points

• The programs authorized in the farm bill’s conservation title could significantly mitigate greenhouse gas emissions from the US agricultural sector and help farmers adapt to a changing climate. But to realize that potential, the ways those programs are implemented must change.
• The Conservation Reserve Program can be reoriented toward promoting reforestation by changing how land offered for enrollment is evaluated, while the Conservation Stewardship and Environmental Quality Incentives programs can be reoriented toward climate change objectives by changing funding allocation mechanisms and relaxing current restrictions.
• The Biden administration’s “climate-smart” agriculture initiative, a first step in this reorientation, features reasonable diversification of innovative approaches to address agricultural heterogeneity.

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Introduction

Farming—at least as we know it today—is especially vulnerable to changes in climate because of its fundamental reliance on natural conditions. Climate determines the level and timing of precipitation, temperature, and frequency of extreme weather events that, along with other broad factors, determine crop and varietal choices, crop yields, and forage production on pastures and grazing land. In the long term, climate is also an important determinant of soil composition. Anthropogenic climate change already affects agriculture around the world, and its impacts will only increase over time as the changes humans have already set in motion continue to materialize.

Agriculture’s relationship with climate means that adapting to and mitigating climate change are important. Adaptation is important because climate change impacts, which are likely to vary in important and complex ways across countries and regions, will require developing new crop varieties, livestock breeds, and farming methods. Changes in climate may also alter regional comparative advantages, leading to shifts in the locations and countries where farmers plant crops and raise livestock.

Mitigation is important because changes in agricultural practices can reduce the extent of climate change. For example, changes in land use can sequester more carbon, and farmers can adjust production practices to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and sequester more carbon as well.

The farm bill has traditionally authorized programs that can help adaptation and mitigation. Public funds for agricultural research and development (R&D) can be used to develop crop varieties and farming methods suited to new climate realities. Programs authorized in the farm bill’s conservation title can help farmers implement the changes necessary for adaptation and mitigation.

In this report, I focus on programs authorized in the farm bill’s conservation title. Reauthorizing the farm bill is now clearly on the congressional agenda, making it timely to ask whether conservation and other programs, as currently configured, can address the challenges climate change poses. It is also timely to consider what, if anything, can be done to improve the programs’ capacities to meet those challenges. Further, I comment briefly on the projects selected for the Biden administration’s “climate-smart” agriculture initiative, which uses Inflation Reduction Act funds to expand programs aimed at working farmland.

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