Climate-smart farm bill is key to US global leadership on sustainable ag
Sova, et. al, 19 --- *Ph.D. from Oxford University, senior director of Public Policy and Research at World Food Program USA (October 15, 2019, Chase Sova, Kimberly Flowers - executive director of the Goldfarb Center for Public Affairs at Colby College, and Christian Man - policy action lead for the Just Rural Transition and an adjunct professor at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University, “Climate Change and Food Security: A Test of U.S. Leadership in a Fragile World,” https://www.csis.org/analysis/climate-change-and-food-security-test-us-leadership-fragile-world, recut by JMP))
Support domestic efforts to promote climate resilience in food systems: The credibility and potency of our leadership at global levels begins with our commitment to change and improve our own priorities. Very public controversies around the alleged suppression of research regarding the impact of climate change on food production from the Agricultural Research Service at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has brought into question the administration’s ability to lead by example. For continued progress in reducing agriculture’s global greenhouse gas footprint and improving adoption of climate-smart agricultural practices, the United States must walk the walk here at home. Climate-smart interventions are not limited to developing country contexts. In the United States, cover cropping, for example, has increased considerably, but the practice still represents only a small percentage of planted area. These and other regenerative practices are being rolled out in the United States thanks, in part, to USDA’s 10 regional Climate Hubs, led by the Agricultural Research Service and the Forest Service. In this same spirit, the United States should continue and expand its leveraging of domestic university research programs for developing global climate solutions in agriculture. U.S. universities, through the Feed the Future Innovation Labs, are currently involved in research on climate resilient sorghum, wheat, millet, cowpea, chickpea, and beans.64 Finally, recent years have seen the emergence of several mechanisms that compensate U.S. farmers for storing carbon in their agricultural soils, including in California and several non-profit and private sector initiatives. These initiatives require federal support to be sustainable in the long run, a step that should be explored within USDA’s existing authorities or in the next Farm Bill cycle.