Only structural changes can solve emissions from agriculture.
Ariel Ron 24. Glenn M. Linden Associate Professor of the US Civil War Era at Southern Methodist University. He is a historian of nineteenth-century US politics and economics, with particular interest in agriculture, energy and development. "The Iron Farm Bill". Phenomenal World. 5-2-2024. https://www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/the-iron-farm-bill/
Even if Democrats protect IRA funding, “climate-smart” agriculture so far appears to mean pouring federal money into often dubious technological solutions designed to sustain the dominant productivist approach of maximizing yields.7 This is in keeping with the IRA’s broader political-economic bent, which favors incentivizing the private sector to innovate and invest in decarbonizing technologies. Daniela Gabor has criticized this approach as “derisking” for business at the expense of public investment. In agricultural policy, however, derisking is nothing new. Since the 1920s, federal provision of subsidies and specialized credit facilities have underwritten farmers’ continued uptake of productivity-enhancing technologies by reducing uncertainties related to outlays for new capital investments.8 The IRA is already playing into a familiar agricultural policy script.
There were benefits to this approach in the past, but we now face a climate crisis that demands a fundamental reassessment of agricultural policy. This is a profoundly structural question. The existing policy instruments appear ill-suited for climate goals because they were made by a political coalition oriented toward the ever increasing production of commodity crops and meat. Rather than continue this pattern, today’s rural agenda should be broadened, and it should rechannel a portion of agricultural subsidies toward a reduction of crop acreage in favor of reforestation.