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According to the U.S. Global Change Research Program, mitigation involves interventions to reduce the human-induced factors that contribute to climate change.
NRCS can help producers, land managers and owners mitigate climate change by providing them the tools and knowledge to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve carbon storage through conservation practices. Producers have opportunities to employ practices that save time and money and take advantage of market forces that may lead to new commodities such as carbon sales and bioenergy crops.
Agricultural Activities That Mitigate the Impact of Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Agricultural and forestry activities can contribute to the reduction in atmospheric buildup of GHGs in three important ways: sequestration, emissions reductions, and fossil fuel substitution.
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Sequestration: Carbon dioxide (CO2) removed from the atmosphere can be stored in soils, biomass, and harvested products, and protected or preserved to avoid CO2 release back to the atmosphere. These become carbon stores or carbon sinks.
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Emissions reductions: Agricultural CH4 and N2O emissions can be reduced through effective manure and feed management and efficient fertilizer application. CO2 emissions can be reduced by adopting more fuel efficient technologies and practices.
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Fossil fuel substitution: Using biofuels produced in the agricultural sector instead of fossil fuels can help lower GHG concentrations.
By adopting these practices, producers can save money and time while enhancing and improving the environment around them, a common goal for many farmers and ranchers as well as their community partners.
Ecosystem Services
Ecosystem services are part of the focus of market-oriented approaches proposed for a component of the Conservation Title in the 2007 Farm Bill. The goal of market-based conservation is to take conservation beyond the farm, ranch, and forest and develop a system that mainstreams environmental credit trading. A USDA policy memorandum, USDA Roles in Market-Based Environmental Stewardship established a role for agriculture and forestry in providing environmental offsets and enhancements and developing accounting practices and procedures for quantifying environmental goods and services.
The USDA has instituted new standards and targeted specific portions of incentive programs toward an ecosystem market place by aligning its conservation programs with other Federal programs aimed at reducing non-point source pollution, preserving wildlife habitat, enhancing carbon sequestration in soils, and reducing GHG emissions. The USDA-NRCS and the Department of Interior Fish and Wildlife Service and Associated Agencies signed a partnership agreement to explore and facilitate habitat credit trading markets for conservation benefits of listed, endangered and other at-risk species.
NRCS has also partnered with EPA to collaborate on efforts to establish a water quality credit trading market and coordinate related programs. A pilot program in water quality credit trading is being developed for the Chesapeake Bay Basin in support of this collaboration. These activities and partnerships are all expected to stimulate and facilitate other actions including participation in carbon or bundled environmental benefits markets.
USDA is sponsoring improved monitoring and reporting guidelines for voluntary initiatives. The USDA agencies and their cooperators develop tools to estimate the amount of carbon stored and GHG emissions reduced at the field and producer level. COMET-VR is a web-based, interactive decision support tool that includes the effects of land-management changes and is authorized for voluntary GHG reporting under section 1605(b) of the 1992 Energy Policy Act. It is a cooperative effort between NRCS and Colorado State University. Tools like COMET-VR make it easier for producers to estimate carbon storage, nitrogen and fuel use, and GHG emissions reductions for their entire holdings. The market for carbon credits trading in the form of carbon emissions reduction is in its formative stages and agricultural producers stand to benefit. To educate producers and land owners for rangeland, NRCS released an Environmental Credit Trading Information document that discusses Carbon Credit Trading on Rangeland.
USDA policy goals in this section are also linked to other major legislative mandates including the EPA Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR), the Healthy Forest Initiatives in 2002, the National Environmental Policy Act Task Force (NEPA) in 2003, and the White Waters to Blue Water Initiative under the Oceans Act of 2000.
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