Reducing Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Emissions Through Voluntary Action

Remarks by Bruce I. Knight, Chief Natural Resources Conservation Service U.S. Department of Agriculture at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Tenth Session of the Conference of Parties (U.S. Government Side Event)

Buenos Aires, Argentina
December 8, 2004


Good Afternoon. Thank you all for attending this afternoon’s session. It is a pleasure to be here to talk a bit about what the U.S. Department of Agriculture and farmers and ranchers in the United States are doing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. I am enjoying being here for the COP-10 meeting. I have particularly enjoyed meeting and sharing experiences with the delegates from other countries.

I especially want to thank the Government of Argentina for their hospitality. I am looking forward to a field trip to visit to an Argentine farm later this week.

It is an honor to be on the program with my fellow representatives from the Department of State, the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The agriculture industry is responsible for a small but significant portion of the greenhouse gas emissions in the United States – about nine percent of the total.

As part of the problem of greenhouse gas emissions, agriculture has an obligation to be part of the solution. But, beyond the trade-off between problem and solution, American agriculture stands to benefit greatly from the overall commitment of our country and others to sequester carbon and reduce greenhouse gas emissions -- regardless of the rate and timing of climate change.


Reducing Emissions / Maintaining Profitability

Agricultural systems are vulnerable to changes in growing season, precipitation, and water availability. The concerns for agriculture are best summarized as mitigating the impact of change on farmers and identifying the role of farmers in mitigating greenhouse gases.

The focus on our working lands must remain the production of food and fiber. The technologies and systems for reducing emissions or sequestering carbon must be compatible with agricultural production systems.


Conservation Partnerships

Over the last 70 years, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has developed a partnership approach to conservation on agricultural lands. 2005 is the 70th anniversary of NRCS. The partnership approach applies to all kinds of conservation, including basic soil and water conservation, wildlife habitat improvement, and reduction of greenhouse gasses and carbon sequestration.

The partnership approach has produced major benefits. For example, we have achieved a 40 percent decline in soil erosion on agricultural lands in the last 20 years. Even more amazing, we have gone from nearly 600,000 acres of wetland losses 50 years ago to no net loss of wetlands due to agriculture last year.

On a policy level, we encourage partnerships that leverage public and private resources. For example, combining cost-share programs for erosion and water quality with private credits for carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide reductions.

History has shown that while regulation has a place in every society, undue reliance on regulation has several drawbacks: regulations have real costs, and these costs are not necessarily borne equally, regulations can remove incentives for innovation, and regulation can produce unanticipated results.

For example, requirements to reduce the runoff of nutrients from livestock operations are causing farmers to install lagoons to treat animal waste. While these lagoons are effective in keeping nutrients out of our waterways, unless covered they result in the emissions of air pollutants and greenhouse gases.

A flexible partnership approach has a better chance of avoiding such pitfalls. This is one of the reasons we are focused on partnerships at USDA.


Climate Change Activities at USDA

When President Bush announced his Climate Change Strategy, he challenged USDA to recommend targeted incentives for greenhouse gas offsets from agriculture and forests.

The 2002 farm bill provides USDA with the authority and a record level of resources to build partnerships -- including partnerships that target greenhouse gases. The 2002 farm bill includes an increase of more than $17 billion for conservation, which opens up many more options for many more producers. The bill also places more emphasis on livestock and poultry operations, which is good news in the climate change arena.

In 2003, Secretary Veneman announced a series of actions that USDA will take to increase carbon sequestration and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from forests and agriculture. Coupled with the increases in overall conservation spending, these actions are expected to increase the carbon sequestration and greenhouse gas emissions reductions from the conservation programs by over 12 million tons of carbon equivalent in 2012.

That reduction represents approximately 12 percent of President Bush’s goal to reduce greenhouse gas intensity of the American economy by 18 percent in the next decade.

USDA is harnessing a portfolio of conservation programs to build carbon back into the soil and vegetation, integrating greenhouse gas considerations in our conservation efforts.


Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP)

The United States’ single largest program for conservation on working lands is the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, or EQIP, administered by the Natural Resources Conservation Service.

EQIP is based on the premise that cropland does not need to be taken out of production to sequester carbon. Under EQIP, NRCS provided guidance to States to reward actions that sequester carbon and reduce greenhouse gases within the EQIP ranking system.

In the animal agriculture industry, EQIP helps producers install such practices as anaerobic digesters to reduce methane from manure. The methane can be captured and used as fuel for power generation or direct heating.


Conservation Reserve Program (CRP)

The Conservation Reserve Program, administered by USDA’s Farm Service Agency, provides significant amounts of carbon sequestration. Conversion of cultivated lands back into forests, grasslands or wetlands, which occurs on CRP lands, fosters the accumulation of carbon in soils and vegetation.

In August 2004, President Bush directed USDA to sustain the environmental benefits of CRP by offering early re-enrollments and contract extensions for acres that begin expiring in 2007. This action underscores a commitment to full enrollment of CRP up to 39.2 million acres.


Wetlands Reserve Program (WRP)

The Wetlands Reserve Program, administered by the Natural Resources Conservation Service, can also provide significant amounts of carbon sequestration by conversion of cultivated lands back into wetlands.


Grassland Reserve Program GRP

In the summer of 2004, the Department of Agriculture announced the first sign-up for the new Grassland Reserve Program (GRP), which will help landowners protect and restore these grasslands. Grasslands provide critical ecological benefits, including carbon sequestration.


Bioenergy Program

The Department of Agriculture also has several initiatives in the area of bioenergy. The joint USDA, Department of Energy Biomass Research and Development Initiative has awarded $25 million in grants to carry out research, development, and demonstration of biomass energy, biobased products, biofuels and biopower processes. Leveraging of this money through contributions from other sources brings the total to $38 million.


Conservation Innovation Grants

USDA has announced more than $14 million in Conservation Innovation Grants for 41 projects in 29 States to fund the development and adoption of innovative conservation technologies and approaches through pilot projects and field trials. Several of these grants support such things as developing ways of reducing ammonia emissions from poultry litter, reducing emissions through conservation tillage, making more use of solar energy technologies, and developing private carbon sequestration trading credits.


Conservation Security Program (CSP)

The 2002 farm bill also created a new program called the Conservation Security Program (CSP) to reward farmers and ranchers who have been practicing good stewardship and to motivate other producers to do more.

CSP is unique among conservation programs in that it authorizes payment for energy management. Much of the energy management portion of the CSP program builds upon a whole-farm energy audit, which gauges the energy intensity of each operation and recognizes where cost-effective changes exist.

CSP also provides incentives for renewable energy generation and use.


International Partnerships

USDA is also supporting the efforts of our government to build international partnerships on climate change. We are actively participating in eight bilateral climate change agreements with other governments, and we participate in more than 70 climate change projects in partnership with other governments. We are enthusiastic about the potential to work with other governments to find ways to economically recover methane from animal waste systems through the recently announced Methane to Markets Partnership.

Long-term economic viability of US agriculture will depend on our ability to innovate and to create new products. The Methane to Markets partnership and the focus on energy generation from what previously was considered a waste product, is a good example of the way we need to think about agriculture, energy, and the environment.


Conclusion

To conclude, although the costs of reducing agricultural greenhouse gas emissions fall on the landowner, many of the benefits go to the public. So, to keep agriculture strong, we must find ways for landowners to recoup many of the costs. That means finding ways to place a value on the benefits our farmers and ranchers produce and creating a market for those benefits.

Companies are understandably reluctant to invest in forest and agriculture offsets without reliable estimates of the benefits of land management practices. Our charge is to take down the barrier of doubt, confusion, and uncertainty.

Fortunately, with growing cooperation between Federal agencies and the passage of the 2002 farm bill, we are beginning to make it more economical for domestic producers to do their job and meet regulatory requirements. Through these approaches and with a lot of hard work, we can bring economics and conservation into the proper alignment.

Thank you.