Democratic presidential candidates say they want to pay farmers to fight climate change, but it will take more than compensation to break down financial and cultural barriers to farmers’ adoption of conservation practices.
In all three Democratic primary debates so far, candidates have talked about their plans to involve the agriculture community in strategies to address climate change. The pitch comes as Democratic candidates court rural American voters after losing much of their support in 2016.
“[R]ural America can be part of the solution instead of being told they’re part of the problem,” South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg said during the first Democratic debate June 28. “With the right soil management and other kind of investments, rural America could be a huge part of how we get this done.”
But the devil is in the details. While many of the Democratic candidates’ climate plans would increase funding for existing incentive programs at the Department of Agriculture and elsewhere, they don’t address some of the most critical barriers farming groups and consumer goods companies say stand in their way: problems with federal crop insurance and a lack of local resources to help farmers test out new practices on their land.
And increasing attention by the Democratic candidates to these practices, while welcomed by many in the farming and environmental communities, also could create a new hurdle for farmers: Politics in a space that’s traditionally been largely bipartisan.
“There’s been a concern about, at least in terms of soil carbon and soil health, that it’s going to be something that becomes polarized and politicized,” Jane Zelikova, senior scientist at the climate-focused group Carbon180, told the Washington Examiner.
Republican lawmakers have a real interest in market-based approaches to incentivize farmers to switch to more sustainable soil practices, but linking those with more ambitious climate policy plans could risk losing their support.
“When we talk about soil health, there are benefits to everyone,” Zelikova said. “You don’t have to lead with climate, although there are clear climate benefits.”
The Department of Agriculture, under the Trump administration, has already taken some steps to help farmers.
In June, the department’s Risk Management Agency, which oversees federal crop insurance, updated its guidelines for when farmers must get rid of so-called “cover crops” to remain eligible for insurance. Cover crops, which can range from cereals like wheat and barley to grasses, are planted in off seasons, and they can help improve soil quality, increase soil resilience to extreme weather, and store carbon in the soil, according to scientific research.
The agency’s June guidelines should offer farmers more flexibility in how and when to uproot their cover crops to make way for their cash crops, Administrator Martin Barbre told the Washington Examiner, speaking from a field office in Kansas City.
Previously, the agency hadn’t included planting cover crops in its bucket of “good farming practices” covered by insurance, but the new guidelines make that fix, Barbre, a lifelong farmer and former president of the National Corn Growers Association, said. And he thinks the changes will encourage more farmers to start planting cover crops.
The changes were prompted by a bipartisan push lawmakers included in the latest farm bill.
But the new cover crop guidelines are only a first step to increase support for farmers, according to agriculture groups, companies, and environmentalists. They say the crop insurance program needs fundamental change — in part to allow farmers to absorb the cost effects of any decreases in crop yield as they’re trying out cover crops, no-till farming, or other practices.
The program could also directly incentivize more sustainable practices, Callie Eideberg, the Environmental Defense Fund’s senior policy manager for ecosystems and sustainable agriculture, told the Washington Examiner.
As it’s currently set up, crop insurance is “a mathematical calculation that doesn’t fully bring in all of the factors that could reduce the farmers’ risk,” Eideberg said. Planting cover crops, for example, can increase soil resilience to drought or flood.
The insurance program could be a “stronger tool” to push farmers to switch to those practices that would help them reduce risk in the long-term, Eideberg said.
Rural climate plans from Democratic candidates, however, are focused mostly on pouring millions more into existing incentive programs like conservation grants.
While farmers would welcome more financial support, experts also caution that not every farmer wants grant money or can access it.
There need to be fewer “hoops to jump through,” said Stefani Millie Grant, senior manager of external affairs and sustainability for the consumer goods giant Unilever. “There are farmers who don’t want to get the federal funding because they don’t want to fill out the paperwork.”
She said she struggles with the fact that many of the Democratic candidates’ plans are Washington-focused. There needs to be increasing focus on supporting local and regional Department of Agriculture staff, who are the ones fielding questions from farmers implementing these practices.
Grant encouraged greater investments in local resources and training, noting she hears from farmers that many of the Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service local offices aren’t fully staffed.
More local support could also help alleviate some of the cultural barriers to adopting sustainable agriculture practices, though farming groups and environmentalists acknowledge those impediments are much tougher to crack with policy.
Roger Johnson, president of the National Farmers Union, which represents more than 200,000 farmers and ranchers, said there’s “peer pressure in farming like there is in everything else,” and that can make it difficult for farmers to try new practices, especially if they’re the only ones in their community to do so.
“As farmers, we sometimes tend to talk ourselves out of things before we try them,” Johnson told the Washington Examiner. He added that he hopes farmers “don’t become sticks in the mud.”
“We need to do everything we can in order to deal with climate change,” Johnson said. “Agriculture is one of the very few places where we know you can change practices and very quickly sequester carbon.”
