1. Passage enables climate-smart innovation---key to stop runaway warming.

The stakes are high as Congress begins serious discussions to reauthorize the farm bill, which expires at the end of September 2023. Among other things, this legislation represents a major opportunity to enable private landowners, farmers, ranchers, and rural communities to take action to address the crises of climate change and nature loss.

In fact, in a divided Congress where House majority leadership has staked out an obstructionist position on most climate action, the must-pass farm bill may represent the only meaningful opportunity to make progress on these issues in the 118th Congress. Conversely, if extreme positions prevail and Congress strips away farm bill program investments made in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, America will take a massive step backward on climate, conservation, and rural prosperity.

Scale of the climate and nature opportunity

Farm bill conservation programs represent the largest source of federal funding for private landowners to preserve and steward their lands, waters, and wildlife for current and future generations; yet demand for these programs significantly outpaces supply, and competing pressures are growing.1 Meanwhile, as the climate crisis deepens, farm bill support can enable U.S. agriculture to lead the world in climate-smart innovation, help farmers and ranchers benefit from greenhouse gas-reducing practices, and build cleaner and more reliable energy solutions for rural America.

Climate-smart agriculture represents a crucial front in the fight against climate change. With 10 percent of U.S. emissions coming from the agricultural sector and abundant opportunities to reduce emissions through improved practices and land use, the farm bill’s voluntary incentive programs hold tremendous potential to deliver meaningful gains for farmers and the climate.2 Additionally, a 2021 CAP analysis found that nature loss in the United States is driving the emissions of 140 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MMT CO2e) each year.3 However, achieving President Joe Biden’s U.S. land conservation goal has the potential to reverse that trend and yield an additional 215 MMT CO2e stored by nature—as much savings as taking 47 million cars off the road. New farm bill program investments through the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) recognize the fundamental link between conservation and climate and direct resources toward practices that achieve conservation, resilience, and greenhouse gas reduction goals, all while supporting rural clean energy solutions that are building more resilient, reliable, and affordable energy systems.