Webinar examines how to expand use of practices that reduce emissions and sequester carbon

Roughly 11 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions — mostly nitrous oxide and methane — can be traced to the nation’s agricultural sector.

A range of ‘climate-smart’ farming practices have the potential to lower that impact, and also help sequester carbon dioxide emitted by other parts of the economy. For example, planting cover crops in between plantings of cash crops can absorb CO2 into the soil, among other benefits. However, cover crops and other climate-smart practices aren’t yet the norm.

“I’m seeing more and more farmers getting on board,” said Mitchell Hora, a seventh-generation Iowa farmer, and founder and CEO of Continuum Ag. “The issue is, in the first couple years, it’s really tough. You’re changing your practices, but you’re changing your mindset as well.”

Hora was among the panelists at a recent webinar hosted by the National Academies, Scientific American, and Nature Portfolio that explored how to increase the use of climate-smart agricultural practices. Moderated by Scientific American’s Laura Helmuth and Andrea Thompson, the event was part of the annual Science on the Hill series of conversations, which connects policymakers with experts from the scientific community.

U.S. Rep. Sean Casten of Illinois, who offered opening remarks, explained how climate change is expected to affect farming in his own state and beyond it. “We are facing massive agricultural collapse if we don’t deal with climate change quickly,” he said, describing an analysis done by the University of Chicago that examined economic impacts of climate change at the county level.

“Based on current seed technology, and changes that we know are coming in temperature [and] in terms of rain and drought cycles, by mid-century, we don’t have corn that will grow in Illinois, because it’s not going to germinate in time,” he said. “These are huge problems that will disrupt the whole economy. We have got to solve this.”

Agricultural practices that store more carbon in soil can offer benefits to farmers as well as to the climate, noted Casten, but to farmers who already face challenges like volatile commodity prices and weather, they can seem a risky bet. One of policymakers’ tasks is to help de-risk those changes, he said.

U.S. Rep. John Curtis of Utah stressed the need to work with farmers as partners. “There’s very few people who understand environmentalism like our farmers, but sometimes they just speak it in a different language,” he said.

“We’ve got to listen to them, and realize we’re not going to force changes in this industry — we have to work with them as partners,” he said. “They’re very willing partners — their livelihoods depend on the success of taking care of the Earth and being good stewards over the Earth.”

A two-pronged approach to climate

The two main greenhouse gases emitted by U.S. agriculture are methane from livestock production and nitrous oxide, which is produced in soil by microbes and affected by how farmers manage fertilizers, explained Keith Paustian of Colorado State University.

On the other hand, agriculture in the U.S. is not a major source of CO2 emissions, he said. “Our agricultural lands currently are a small sink — in other words, slightly more carbon dioxide is taken up on average than is emitted.” A few million tons of carbon are accumulating in U.S. grassland and cropland soils each year, he noted.

Agriculture needs to take a two-pronged approach to climate — lessening its own nitrous oxide and methane emissions, and expanding its carbon sink in order to absorb more carbon emitted by other sectors, Paustian said.

Deepthi Kolady of South Dakota State University pointed out that practices devoted to those goals often have direct benefits for farmers too. For example, no-till agriculture — in which farmers don’t till the soil before planting — can sequester carbon, improve soil health, reduce runoff, and also reduce fuel and labor costs for farmers. “These practices have synergistic environmental and economic benefits,” she said.

Expanding the use of climate-smart practices

Hora agreed that the practices can be good for farmers financially — a message that isn’t always adequately conveyed to them. “Cover crops, no-till … these conservation programs have been branded to the farmer wrong,” he said. “They’ve been branded and marketed as defensive management tools — defense against erosion, defense against water quality issues.”

Instead, these practices should be described as offensive management tools that can directly help improve a farm’s profitability, said Hora.

“The key thing is to really help them to understand how to go about making this profitable on its own, because it absolutely can be,” he said. “A lot of stuff that we do on our farm — we’re getting zero cost-share payments and really making it work. We’re more profitable now than ever because we’re more resilient, we’ve cut our costs on a lot of things.”

For example, cover crops are Hora’s fertilizer program and part of his herbicide, soil management, and moisture management programs. “Also, it sequesters carbon and improves soil health,” he said. “But right now, it helps me pay the bills, helps me to be more profitable.”

Cost-share dollars — offered through the federal Conservation Stewardship Program and other programs — can help farmers as they try new approaches, said Hora. Just as important is providing farmers with the right advice as they pursue these practices. Universities, extension services, and the Natural Resources Conservation Service are trying their best to keep up and offer information and support, but a lot of farmers still need to be reached, he said.

Also key to the effort will be developing better, fine-tuned models and scoreboards that help farmers monitor their progress in reducing carbon, Hora said — just as there are currently scoreboards available to help farmers track yield.

“Farmers are stewards of their own lands … but they are constrained by economic constraints, geographic constraints, weather constraints,” noted Kolady in closing. “They are doing their part. It is on us — the researchers, the policymakers — to work with them to have innovative policies and programs and institutional collaborative partnerships to scale up these climate-smart agricultural practices.”

• Watch the webinar