Climate-Smart Agriculture Funding at Risk

Tim Hammerich

News Reporter

Through a pandemic and now wildfires, California has had to reallocate resources to respond. Some of the victims include critical programs to help make agriculture more sustainable and resilient to a changing climate. One of those programs is State Water Efficiency and Enhancement Program, or SWEEP, which started the year with $20 million in the general fund of the Governor’s proposed budget.

Here’s California Climate and Agriculture Network Executive Director Renata Brillinger.

Brillinger… “Well, SWEEP is a really popular program. It's one of the first that started, when it comes to the, the suite of climate smart agriculture programs that California has launched. These are programs that don't exist as comprehensively anywhere else in the world. We've really blazed a trail here. It's invested $80 million so far in grants, over 800 projects around the state. The majority of California's counties have got some SWEEP program projects in them. So it's really, really widely spread. It has saved a lot of water, almost 36 billion gallons of water have been saved through the program.”

Brillinger says the cap and trade program has also could provide funding, but it has be a somewhat volatile source of funds with a lot of competing programs for that money.