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Lawmakers on Capitol Hill have little hope in the short term of addressing a problem that critics say has been ignored for too long and requires, like so much in tackling climate change, an immediate response.
But they say they're teeing up ideas that could inform legislation when the political moment comes.
"We're under no belief that 2020 is going to be the landmark year for some big climate legislation on the Hill," said Juli Obudzinksi, interim policy director of the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition. "That being said, there's a lot of momentum. Candidates are talking about this. Bills are coming out."
Progress is happening on the farm, too, as more farmers use conservation farming methods, including less tillage and more cover crops.
"There were 20 million acres in cover crops and 104 million acres in no-till," Myers said, referring to 2017 Census of Agriculture figures. "We've still got a long way to go, but the trend is in the right direction."
The Potential for Carbon Markets
As agriculture has come increasingly under the microscope for its greenhouse gas emissions, discussions of a cap-and-trade system have re-emerged.
In 2009, legislation that became known as the Waxman-Markey bill outlined the first economy-wide carbon emissions trading system in which American farms could voluntarily participate. Greenhouse gas-emitters would be able to purchase credits from farms that took carbon-storing steps on their land. The bill passed the House, but not the Senate, after the fossil fuel industry and agriculture lobby worked to scuttle the legislation. At the time, critics said it would be too difficult to calculate what constituted a trade-worthy credit.
But that was a decade ago, and mounting evidence has since made clear that cutting emissions from agriculture and land-use will be critical in the battle to forestall climate change.
"Ten years ago, farmers didn't see themselves as sequestering carbon, but we've had 10 years of education. Now it's seen as something viable," Myers said.
Even Sonny Perdue, the conservative Secretary of Agriculture who questions the link between human activity and climate change, has countenanced the idea of a cap-and-trade system.
"Farmers and producers have been really intense victims of climate change," Perdue said in a budget hearing in April.
"We've been really guilty of not talking about how farmers can be part of the solution," he said. "It's amazing the tons of greenhouse gas and CO2 emissions that we can capture in our soils if we have, I think, the incentivization of maybe a carbon market from agriculture do that."
Rye grass, planted here in a corn field by aerial seeding, is an example of a cover crop that can establish itself before corn is harvested. Credit: Natural Resources Conservation Service Massachusetts
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