Frozen Climate And Conservation Funds Leave Farmers In Limbo

FLORA LICHTMAN: This is Science Friday. I’m Flora Lichtman. Around the country, farmers are planting and planning this season’s crops. It can be uncertain work. And it’s being made even more tenuous by some of this administration’s changes to climate and conservation policies. The administration has frozen billions of dollars in grants to farmers for sustainable agriculture, conservation, and climate smart projects. In some cases, farmers had already signed contracts with the government and begun work on these projects.

While some funding was recently released, many farmers across the country are still in limbo. Joining me now to talk about this and the future of farming in a changing climate are my guests– Patrick Brown, a farmer in Warren County, North Carolina, and Dr. Kitty O’Neil, an agricultural climate resiliency specialist at Cornell University’s Cooperative Extension. She’s based in St. Lawrence County, New York. Welcome to you both to Science Friday.

PATRICK BROWN: Thank you.

KITTY O’NEIL: Thank you.

FLORA LICHTMAN: OK, Patrick, let’s start with you. You were set to receive a grant through this Climate Smart Commodities program through the USDA. Can you explain what that was for?

PATRICK BROWN: Yes. So our farm participates in partnerships and Climate Smart Commodities grants to incorporate cover crops into our existing farm program, to add riparian buffers to our forestry lands and to create ways to regenerate our soil by fertility management. We were set to receive a reimbursement of up to $67,000 in grant funding for the work that we’ve already done last year.

FLORA LICHTMAN: So this was a contract that was signed.

PATRICK BROWN: Yes, these are signed agreements.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Signed agreements, and you are waiting for reimbursement, and it hasn’t come.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Correct. As of January 29, the program that oversees our project stated that they received a letter from the USDA that all funds that were scheduled to be reimbursed would be frozen indefinitely.

FLORA LICHTMAN: So some of that money was for cover crops. What is a cover crop, and why is it important?

PATRICK BROWN: Cover crops are important, especially in my area because we are highly erodible farmland. Our cover crops prevent erosion. But also, it can add nutrient levels to offset the cost of synthetic nutrients that continue to rise in this inflated economy. So these cover crops save us money.

FLORA LICHTMAN: And what does it mean for your farm to have these funds frozen? What’s the impact for you?

PATRICK BROWN: It’s drastic because we were looking to try to actually operate this year without having to borrow capital from our banking institutions in order to do business. We were actually going into this year with a slight advantage to be more prepared, looking to increase our yields, as we trace those yields each and every year because that determines our profit and how we build capacity on our farm.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Kitty, how widespread is this? Do you a sense how many farmers are in the boat that Patrick’s in?

KITTY O’NEIL: I hear variable answers to this question. Hearing directly from farmers like Patrick with their own direct experiences with some of these programs right now is the best information because it’s not the same everywhere. Some projects seem to be continuing, and others are going in the direction of Patrick’s, where it’s just been completely interrupted at the point of reimbursement.

FLORA LICHTMAN: A lot of Americans are on board with cutting federal spending. Why are these climate and conservation programs in farming necessary? What’s the case for them?

KITTY O’NEIL: So I like to compare these current funding opportunities to something like the Clean Air Act of the early ’90s. We identified an environmental problem. Coal-burning plants in the Midwest were emitting sulfur and nitrogen into their emissions that were then causing acid rain, and that was being deposited on all downwind communities for hundreds and hundreds of miles. And we had a federal initiative to help fund those plants, install scrubbers in their smokestacks, and switch to low nitrogen and sulfur fuels. And those kinds of investments for those businesses would never have brought an economic return directly to the business.

But with federal funding, we were able to incentivize those changes, bring about those improvements to all those communities downwind, including where I am, all the way in the Northeast. And we have, as a result, forests and lakes and soils coming back from that damage. So I think some of these current funding opportunities are much like that. We’ve identified a problem. We would like to see farms and lots of other businesses and municipalities, too. It’s not just for farms. But we’ve identified these places where we can provide some investment on projects and practices and systems that would never provide a business return.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Well, Kitty, what is the problem? What’s the problem we identify that these are addressing largely?

KITTY O’NEIL: There’s greenhouse gas emissions. We’ve identified practices that will reduce CO2, methane, nitrous oxide kinds of emissions and, therefore, begin to reduce, slow down, and actually, in the case of agriculture, reverse climate change. So we’ve identified practices which will reduce the emissions of those greenhouse gases, capture more of it in soils. Patrick mentioned cover crops and some other fertility management practices. Those are the kinds of things that will also, in addition to preventing erosion, will capture more carbon, keep it in the soil over time, and reduce emissions.

So I think that’s one of the interesting parts. This is not something that is being forced upon farms, but there is a lot of industry initiatives. For example, I’m in the Northeast. We have a lot of dairy farms. I’m familiar with some dairy industry initiatives. There’s a big one called Net Zero. These are farmer organizations, and they themselves have decided this is important. We need to work toward this. They’re working on a lot of very innovative ideas to get carbon emissions from dairy farms down to zero over time.

So these kinds of priorities exist outside the government. But the government’s role has been to support and allow some of that to happen in cases where there would not be a direct business return, economic return to a farm for implementing some of those changes.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Do you rely on federal climate data when you work with farmers, Kitty?

KITTY O’NEIL: Yeah, I do a lot. And that’s one of the things that has been sort of in my mind. I use data from several of the regional climate centers, which are federally funded. They’re actually sort of subdivisions of NOAA, the National Weather Service, things like that. And they’ve done a really great job of developing regionally-relevant tools and analysis portals to look at data, visualize it in meaningful ways, which relate to agriculture, municipalities, and businesses in the region. So it’s all based on federal data sets and then looking at them in regionally relevant ways.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Patrick, your farm has been in your family for several generations, I understand. And has climate change made you rethink how you approach farming or even whether it’s a sustainable business?

PATRICK BROWN: Yes. Now that’s a great question because I have identified climate change being a drastic measure for me over the last 20 years of farming this land. For example, planting dates, farm regions have all changed since the ’80s. For example, my location in Warren County, North Carolina, we were considered as region 7B, meaning that two regions below us would plant a lot earlier than we would when it comes to traditional crops being planted or commodity crops being planted.

I could even take it a step further. We, in the fall, would try to have our fall vegetables in the ground by August, the second week. Now we are pushing it towards almost September. The different variables of weather and conditions have all changed, and it has to come from something. It just can’t change like that just because times are evolvement. It has to do with the ozone, it has to do with the nature of the planet. And so that is just one example of planning dates that have really been a difference in how we do business and get prepared each and every year.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Patrick, I asked Kitty this, but I want to get your take too. A lot of Americans are on board with cutting federal spending. Why should the government spend money on these programs?

PATRICK BROWN: Yeah, well, I also agree with auditing the government to make sure that tax dollars are being spent appropriately. However, when it comes to farmers that feed the world, where we need to focus more on what is being put into our products in order to be able to have a healthy environment for all that live on Earth. We have to take a step back and identify what’s important. What are these farmers actually doing?

The USDA froze these funds without even looking at the data that was being collected. Primarily, the work that was being done, of course, was actually the work that the farmers were doing. But more specifically, we were tracing the carbon sequestration, greenhouse gas exposure. All these things were being done that the USDA needs this data in order to really audit what farmers should be doing. And I really think that it’s kind of thinking that they would take the time to rationalize these projects, understand the importance of them, and then make the determination of what’s important and what’s not.

KITTY O’NEIL: Can I add one thing to that, Flora?

FLORA LICHTMAN: Please.

KITTY O’NEIL: A lot of these systems and databases and opportunities to look at data were developed in response to economic priorities. We identified at some point in time that farms are more stable, there’s fewer boom and bust cycles, if there’s some data with which farms and farm ag professionals like me can look at and make some predictions and some recommendations about best practices.

It not only helps smooth out some of the boom and bust rises and falls in economic systems for the farms themselves, but it enhances food security for all of us. If our farms aren’t constantly going in and out of business, that’s good for the whole food system, for all communities everywhere. And so all these systems exist because we identified that to begin with– helping the economy and helping people with food security.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Yes, thank you for connecting those dots, that this matters to us as consumers of food, which is, of course, everybody.

KITTY O’NEIL: Right.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Thank you, Kitty. Thank you, Patrick.

PATRICK BROWN: Thank you.

KITTY O’NEIL: You’re welcome. Happy to be here.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Patrick Brown, a farmer in Warren County, North Carolina, and Dr. Kitty O’Neil, an agricultural climate resiliency specialist at Cornell University’s Cooperative Extension.

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