USDA to invest $1B in Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities

Forestry, Logging
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USDA to invest $1B in Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities

By Erin Voegele | February 14, 2022

The USDA announced on Feb. 7 it will invest $1 billion in partnerships to support America’s climate-smart farmers, ranchers and forest owners through its new Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities opportunity.

The newly launched program will finance pilot projects that create market opportunities for U.S. agricultural and forestry products that use climate-smart practices and include innovative, cost-effective ways to measure and verify greenhouse gas benefits. USDA is now accepting project applications for fiscal year 2022.

“America’s farmers, ranchers, and forest owners are leading the way in implementing climate-smart solutions across their operations,” said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. “Through Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities, USDA will provide targeted funding to meet national and global demand and expand market opportunities for climate-smart commodities to increase the competitive advantage of American producers. We want a broad array of agriculture and forestry to see themselves in this effort, including small and historically underserved producers as well as early adopters.”

For the purposes of this funding opportunity, a climate-smart commodity is defined as an agricultural commodity that is produced using agricultural (farming, ranching or forestry) practices that reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions or sequester carbon.

Funding for the program will be provided through the USDA’s Commodity Credit Corp. to support and provide incentives to pilot project producers and landowners to implement climate-smart production practices, activities and systems on working lands; measure/quantify, monitor and verify the carbon and GHG benefits associated with those practices; and develop markets and promote the resulting climate-smart commodities.

According to a notice of funding opportunity (NFO) published by USDA, projects developed under the program must be tied to the development of markets and promotion of climate-smart commodities. “Markets for climate-smart commodities may include companies or processors sourcing climate-smart commodities to meet internal targets or other supply chain goals, biofuel and renewable energy markets, companies seeking to sell branded consumer products, or other opportunities that could provide a premium or additional revenue for participating producers and land owners,” the USDA said in the NFO.

The use of soil amendments, such as biochar, and the development of anaerobic digestion projects are among those listed in the NFO. The NFO outlines additional application requirements that must be completed as part of applications for anaerobic digester projects.

Applications for the program must be submitted via the Grants.gov website by April 8 for the first funding pool, which covers proposals from $5 million to $100 million. Applications for the second funding pool, which includes proposals from $250,000 to $4.99 million, must be submitted by May 27. The USDA is expected to schedule “meet and greet” webinars related to the program soon.

Additional information, including a full copy of the NFO, is available on the USDA website.

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Pick Me !

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I find it interesting that the USDA is again forwarding yet another $1 billion to American farmers, now in the pursuit of a pseudoscience of anthropogenic climate change. I can only imagine that this funding comes from the 25% USTR 232 and 301 tariffs on steel/aluminum and Chinese trade, respectively where American farmers already have received huge sums of tax-free money to make-up for their losing a vast proportion of their export trade to China and elsewhere over these tariffs.

It is also amusing that activists and/or industry marketers, even consider promoting the carbon sequestration and man caused climate change by action of CO2 when that same gas is responsible for the previous mentioned study on this site of density and biomass increasing in US forests. Well, yes that is the cause and effect of a higher concentration of atmospheric CO2, i.e., a higher growth rate of forest biomass production.

However, in most areas of the world, especially the tropics, stand density and biomass productivity is being countered by mass deforestation, repurposing the land for agricultural uses in a growing population density. These tropical rainforests also sequester far more CO2 than do temperate forest stands given their growing time is cut short, very short, by inclement winter freeze making their deforestation a rather large concern for future CO2 atmospheric concentrations.

In addition, annual, as compared to perennial C3 and C4 plants do not sequester CO2 but for a short time as it is consumed and are decomposed directly back into the atmosphere so the farming community, via their plantings, have little to no effect on sequestering CO2. Recall that the largest contributor of greenhouse gas in the earthly atmosphere is none other than water vapor and why the global climate models have reported false data as they did not, and could not, quantify clouds in their predictions.

One example: [Organized Crime Drives Global Deforestation | DHA (decorativehardwoods.org)]
(Organized Crime Drives Global Deforestation | DHA)

Most activists, however, have forgotten that beginning from 3000 years ago until today there have been four warm periods, namely, the Minoan WP, Roman WP, Medieval WP and now the Modern WP where the prior three having much more warming than today’s warming. To blame global warming on a single source or particular causation is an incorrect assumption, but in reality, a smart marketing scheme by industry to promote their products to their conspiracy theory audience sector who believe in this relatively new science that has yet to acquire their authority from the physical sciences.

The only thing keeping forests strong and healthy today is the increased CO2 ppmv where man’s involvement is in the minutia as a cause of the warming of the earth.

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He needs his own channel. Ask Jeff ?

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