On
Thursday, Earth Day 2021, the Senate Agriculture Committee unanimously
approved by voice
vote
the Growing Climate Solutions Act of 2021 (S. 1251), which would expand
voluntary agricultural carbon sequestration
markets
under private control.
“On Earth Day, our committee came together in a bipartisan way to pass
the Growing Climate Solutions Act,” said Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.).
“This brings us one step closer to providing more opportunities for
farmers and foresters to lead in addressing the climate crisis and also
benefit from new streams of income.”
The
legislation
was introduced by Stabenow and Mike Braun (R-Ind.) with the support of
the biggest corporations in industrial
agriculture,
including Cargill, Bayer, McDonald’s, Archer Daniels Midland, General
Mills, and Syngenta, as well as Big Ag lobbying groups like the
American Farm
Bureau
and the US Chamber of Commerce. Corporate-funded-and-allied
environmental organizations like the Center for Climate and Energy
Solutions, Climate Leadership Council, and the Environmental Defense
Fund are also supporting the bill.
Agribusiness has contributed $2,546,199 to
Stabenow
and $367,483 to
Braun
over their careers.
The bill now has 42 co-sponsors in the
Senate,
ranging from climate hawk Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) to climate
denier Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.).
Companion legislation was introduced
yesterday
in the House of Representatives by Reps. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.) and
Don Bacon (R-Neb.). Agribusiness has contributed $198,675 to
Spanberger
and $478,040 to
Bacon
over their careers.
Other original co-sponsors of the House bill are Reps. Chellie Pingree
(D-Maine), Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), Jeff
Fortenberry (R-Neb.), Paul Tonko (D-N.Y.), Jim Baird (R-Ind.), John
Katko (R-N.Y.), and Josh Harder (D-Calif.).
Advocates for small farmers, sustainable agriculture, and aggressive
climate action criticized the legislation. In 2020, the Institute for
Agriculture and Trade Policy’s Tara Ritter explained how the bill
works:
Although farmers should be incentivized to adopt practices that boost
resilience and sequester carbon, carbon markets have a failed and
wasteful track record compared to public investments in proven
conservation programs. This bill would tee up a framework
incentivizing false solutions to climate change that benefits private
companies over farmers. . .
Voluntary carbon markets are privately-run schemes that pay farmers
for carbon sequestered in their soils to generate carbon credits.
Then, the company running the carbon market sells those credits to
other companies or individuals interested in reducing their carbon
footprint. Companies such as Indigo Ag and Nori are starting up
voluntary carbon markets, claiming that they will increase farm
profits while addressing climate change, all without imposing
government regulations on farmers. Yet, Indigo Ag also plans to sell
farmers proprietary seed coatings and collect farm data, raising
questions of who will benefit most. Unsurprisingly, some of the
biggest backers of these schemes are large agribusiness companies,
including ADM, Bunge, Cargill and more, that
will be able to generate, buy and sell carbon credits to boost their
profits and greenwash their own operations.
The Growing Climate Solutions Act sets up a weak verification system
for the markets. The system relies on third-party entities to both
provide technical assistance and verify the carbon credits. Allowing
an entity to both consult on best practices and certify adherence to
those practices could lead to conflicts of interest. In addition,
verifying entities may self-register in the program simply by
notifying USDA that they will “maintain
expertise in and adhere to the standards published.” This type of
self-reporting will almost certainly be abused, and without strict
enforcement it will weaken the results of already flawed carbon
markets.
Jason Davidson, Senior Food and Agriculture Campaigner for Friends of
the Earth, responded to the committee’s approval of the bill:
We already have policies that will help farmers enhance soil health,
protect biodiversity, and combat the climate crisis without
perpetuating environmental injustice. Carbon markets have failed to
reduce emissions and failed to provide opportunities for America’s
family farmers.
Ecologically regenerative farming should be incentivized in addition
to, and not instead of, carbon reductions in the energy sector. We
should increase incentives for organic transition and heavily invest
in existing successful USDA conservation
programs while retooling them to help producers sequester carbon.
Congress should support existing USDA
technical assistance programs rather than outsource them to polluting
agribusiness giants like Bayer. Family farmers should be supported in
these efforts with structural reforms that ensure fair markets and
fair prices, rather than creating more false promises of new markets
that will predominantly benefit Big Ag.
“There are better bills on the table to meet the goals of maximizing
soil carbon sequestration and reducing emissions from agriculture,”
Ritter wrote, “including Representative Chellie Pingree’s (D-Maine)
Agriculture Resilience
Act and Senator Cory
Booker’s (D-N.J.) Climate Stewardship
Act.”
Even
though the loser of the presidential election, Donald Trump, continues
his quest for autogolpe, President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team is
hard at work preparing his new administration. Among the hundreds of
staff and volunteers comprising the 
Farmers and those in the agriculture economy have
a lot to lose if the trends in billion-dollar weather disasters continue
– particularly when it comes to drought and water shortages, as recent
news indicates. “Central and South Texas are in the