The Farm Bill and Climate-Smart Agriculture

This is Tim Hammerich of the Ag Information Network with your Farm of the Future Report.

With the current interest in climate-smart agriculture, some farmers and ag economists anticipate the next Farm Bill to be very climate-focused. Dr. Bart Fischer of Texas A&M University believes there is a middle ground between providing a safety net for farmers and satisfying climate-smart goals.

Fischer… “It's just incredibly important for the productive capacity of this country that we maintain a safety net for growers because it costs so much to produce. And my worry is those who would like to replace that with conservation aren't really concerned about, you know, the safety net aspect of that. And I think it leaves growers in a pretty precarious position. I mean, most of the work, a lot of the work we're doing on conservation and have done for a long time is climate-smart, right? No till. Overcropping have long been part of the suite of tools available through conservation. And so I do, I do question is the best approach to then add on new things or to just build on what we already have. And when you look at something like EQIP, right, the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, super popular, but it's generally oversubscribed two to one. And so, is the smarter money on addressing the backlog and equip on cost sharing, even if it is on climate-smart things, cost sharing on helping growers, or is it creating new initiatives, you know, in the name of climate-smart. And so to me, there's probably a, there's an efficient middle ground somewhere in the middle.”

Again, that’s Texas A&M Professor, Dr. Bart Fischer.