USDA Spending $1B To Promote Climate-Friendly Agriculture

The US Department of Agriculture will invest $1 billion in pilot projects that promote farming, ranching, and forestry practices that cut greenhouse gas emissions or capture and store climate-warming carbon, USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack told Karl Plume of Reuters.

Photo Insert: Because hydroponic plant cultivation uses roughly 90% water, it is considered more sustainable than regular farming.

The agency is due to announce the Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities program later on Monday (Tuesday, Feb. 8, in Manila).

The program will tap funds from the USDA's Commodity Credit Corp., which provides up to $30 billion annually from the US Treasury to help stabilize agricultural product prices and support farm income.

The investment is the latest Biden administration initiative aimed at combating climate change, with a goal to cut the farm sector's greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 and put the US on a path to net-zero emissions by 2050.

Qualified projects could include initiatives that cut or capture methane emissions on dairy farms or programs which expand the use of farming practices that soak up more climate-warming carbon from the atmosphere and store it in the soil.

Expanding such practices could raise the value of US farm products as food companies and exporters increasingly push to decarbonize their supply chains, Vilsack said.

"We think there is an emerging opportunity here, as consumers demand more sustainably produced food here in the US and certainly in the export market," he told Reuters in an interview.

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