The farm bill is uniquely key to funding conservation programs that prevent climate change.

Some of the farm bill’s funds also go towards conservation programs, which have traditionally paid farmers not to farm. Many farms contain land near waterways or on steep slopes that are highly vulnerable to erosion, for example, and giving farmers funds in exchange for an agreement that they won’t farm them helps stabilize soils. Similar programs exist for protecting grassland and wetland habitat. There are also a number of “working lands” conservation programs that help farmers fund projects that reduce their environmental footprint, like cover cropping, adopting no-till or putting better manure management plans into place. Many of these programs have benefits to climate: leaving land undisturbed helps sequester carbon in soil, and the list of approved projects under working lands conservation programs has expanded to include more climate-oriented projects in recent years. But these are financially small programs that focus most explicitly on soil retention and water quality; by and large, climate change adaptation and mitigation have been largely ignored in the farm bill. As climate advocates argue, many of the bill’s usual provisions actually double down on emissions intensive farming methods, adding incentives for producers to get even bigger whether they’re growing row crops or raising animals in a factory farm setting. But beyond the opportunity to correct some of these incentives, advocates for sustainable agriculture say a new approach to the farm bill could have big benefits for climate-smart agriculture and the people who practice it. Doing so, however, would require some major policy shifts away from big agribusiness interests and towards small farmers, farmworkers and other more marginalized voices within the food system.