USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack announced three grant recipients for ‘climate smart’ products at the Farm Progress Show in Boone, Ia. on Tuesday.
The over $1 billion the federal government is devoting to voluntary efforts to reduce agriculture’s adverse effects on the environment is a better long-term strategy than mandating new rules for farmers, according to Vilsack.
“The challenge,” Vilsack said, “is how do you increase production sustainably? How do you increase production but at the same time do it in a climate-smart way?”
Regarding the $1 billion to support new “climate smart” products, Vilsack announced:
- The University of Missouri will work with farmers to build climate-resilient cropping and livestock systems.
“Most of the climate-smart practices will be incentivized in this project and will contribute to building better soil health, sequester more soil carbon,” said Vilsack. “While the nutrient management approaches will result in reduced fertilizer use and the impacts of fossil fuels and nitrous oxide.”
- South Dakota State University is funding market opportunities for live beef and bison commodities that will use climate-smart grazing and land practices.
“Their plan is to quantify, monitor and verify carbon and GHG benefits associated with climate-smart agricultural production in relation to practices on beef and bison,” said Vilsack.
- The Iowa Soybean Association will work with producers to implement climate-smart practices on millions of acres of corn, soy and wheat to market those crops with companies like Pepsi.
Vilsack noted requests from more than 1,000 applications topped $20 billion.
“It said to me that we are really on to something here. Our farmers and ranchers are really interested in creating new revenue streams,” he said. “They’re interested in reducing their greenhouse gas input. They’re interested in figuring out ways to be more productive. They can improve soil health. They can improve water quality. They can improve livestock quality.”
Other grant recipients will be announced the week of Sept. 13.
