The Build Back Better (BBB) Act passed through the House on Nov. 19, allocating roughly $2.2 trillion to climate change, health and child care, among others. Jim Wiesemeyer, Pro Farmer policy analyst, predicts that unless Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) caves, the Senate will put the Build Back Better vote on hold until 2022. Here is how some of the roughly $82 billion in agricultural spending could be dispersed.
Conservation
A five-year incentive program outlined in the $27 billion conservation portion of BBB offers investments such as $25-per-acre payments for cover crops. That is a signal of the government’s interest in two key carbon incentive unknowns: how to measure it and how to price it, says Jim Wiesemeyer, Pro Farmer policy analyst.
AgriTalk Host Chip Flory sees the $25 cover crop incentive as “enough” to spark farmers interest because it would “cover about half of that $40 to $50 input cost.”
BBB crop incentives offer a higher return than most smaller carbon trading programs, according to Pat Westhoff, director of the Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute at the University of Missouri. If implemented, he says, “it doesn’t appear there’s a cap on how many acres can be planted to receive the proposed $25 per acre incentive.”
Forestry
As it stands, BBB allocates $27 billion in forest-focused investments to reduce wildfire risk through hazardous fuels treatment and vegetation management.
Compared to the past three-decades, the average annual forest area burned from 2021 to 2050 is likely to increase by 50% to 100% if fire and fuels management techniques do not evolve, according to findings from University of California - Merced Professor John Abatzoglou.
Rural Electrification
Under the Rural Energy for America Program, BBB would create a new energy program titled “Clean Energy Repowering for Rural Utilities.” The $9.7 billion repowering program would assist rural electric cooperatives in transitioning from fossil to renewable fuels.
Grants and loans as incentives would be available to rural co-ops who choose to invest in renewable energy and energy efficient technologies, according to Westhoff.
