AGROFORESTRY
A longtime Indigenous practice could feature in the upcoming Farm Bill
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By Maya Glicksman
Policy Advisor
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As we envision a future where farms and forests store more carbon than they emit, we often draw from the oldest ways of knowing and growing: Indigenous practices and traditional ecological knowledge (TEK). For millennia, Tribes have stewarded biodiverse ecosystems by cultivating food in cooperation with nature, nourishing people and land in tandem. This includes co-managing trees, shrubs, and low-lying crops symbiotically — a suite of practices known as agroforestry. European colonizers didn’t recognize this advanced agriculture, but hundreds of years later it's gaining renewed attention at USDA and across agricultural communities as a critical piece of the land-based carbon removal puzzle.
Agroforestry can mitigate climate change, boost ecosystem health, and secure economic and climate resilience. Unlike conventional row crops, trees are perennial and don’t need to be replanted yearly to continue producing — instead, they build deep root systems and underground microbial communities year after year, sequestering carbon undisturbed. Agroforestry is good for farmers and ranchers’ bottom lines, too: Cultivating high-value tree crops like fruit and nuts alongside corn, wheat, and livestock diversifies revenue streams and boosts economic resilience.
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Different forms of agroforestry include: Alley cropping, the planting trees between rows of conventional crops; Silvopasture, incorporating trees into livestock grazing pastures; windbreaks and riparian buffers, the planting of trees or shrubs along farm perimeters that protect against extreme weather, erosion, and runoff into waterways.
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There’s growing support for agroforestry at USDA — last month, the agency awarded The Nature Conservancy, The Savanna Institute, and other partners a $64 million grant to develop markets for tree products across 37 states and spur agroforestry adoption (and it wasn’t the only agroforestry grantee!).
Still, the reality is that less than 2% of US agricultural acres employ agroforestry. Adoption often comes down to a question of time and money because producers must shoulder high upfront costs and wait three to eight years for trees to mature and become harvestable. With Congress’s help, USDA can break down these barriers and incentivize agroforestry in a big way, sequestering 2.2 – 6.4 billion metric tons of CO₂ per year on top of myriad benefits to soil, air, water, and wildlife.
USDA’s Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) already supports certain agroforestry practices, with key limitations. For example, CRP doesn't allow producers to harvest trees or graze livestock on enrolled agroforested land, preventing producers from reaping the economic benefit of the crops they’ve planted and, in doing so, actively disincentivizing re-enrollment. With a foundation already laid, a few targeted adjustments to the program can incentivize longer-term agroforestry.
Inspired in part by CRP’s Grasslands Initiative, Congress should create a new CRP Agroforestry Initiative to incentivize agroforestry across 1 million acres of cropland, pastureland, and grasslands. The initiative should support silvopasture and alley cropping and allow tree crop harvesting and livestock grazing to create economic opportunity (so long as conservation outcomes are sustained). And to reduce high upfront costs, Congress should also increase federal cost-share to at least 75% for agroforestry practices.
We’re optimistic that the 2023 Farm Bill can create the CRP Agroforestry Initiative and enable producers to adopt — and benefit from — these tried and true practices that sequester carbon, provide habitat for wildlife, and revitalize communities.
Learn more about Carbon180’s 2023 Farm Bill recommendations and explore our full suite of recommendations on agroforestry.
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COFFEE BREAK
We’ve been busy working on our 2023 Farm Bill proposal. From the soil itself to forests nationwide, there is a massive opportunity to store carbon in our land. The good news? Carbon storage comes with producer benefits, both economic and ecological.
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APPROPRIATIONS
The current state of federal carbon removal funding
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By Vanessa Suarez
Senior Policy Advisor
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It’s appropriations season, and though this year’s government spending package has hit a few delays, we can get a rough sketch of federal support for carbon removal from the House and Senate funding proposals, released over the summer. It looks promising, especially when we consider that in just four years, federal funding for carbon removal has grown from zero in FY18 to more than $1 billion in FY22 (thanks to both the omnibus and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law).
Here’s the state of play for FY23: Support for carbon removal is still on the up and up, with proposals outpacing the investments in last year’s omnibus by several million. In total, the House proposed $196.5 million for carbon removal across key departments — Energy (DOE), Defense (DOD), and Commerce (DOC) — with the Senate close behind at $193 million. The alignment bodes well for the final omnibus, which will likely fall between the two proposals. It’s also highly aligned with our own requests for FY23 appropriations.
Now, how do these hundreds of millions of dollars break down? In both proposals, the majority of carbon removal funding is at DOE: $175 million in the House package and $186 million in the Senate. Both fund coordinated carbon removal RD&D across the Offices of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management (FECM), Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, and Science, including the department’s landmark carbon removal program housed within FECM.
Over at DOD, the House and Senate lined up again, each recommending $10 million for DAC and ocean carbon removal RD&D. However, differences start to pop up elsewhere — at the Department of Interior, the House alone proposed $6.5 million for coastal blue carbon, and at DOC, the House proposed $5 million for carbon removal broadly while the Senate proposed $3 million for ocean carbon removal.
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In addition to these specific investments, both chambers asked for impressive investments in soil and forestry programs that scale carbon-storing practices. For example, both chambers proposed more than $1.7 billion for the Agricultural Research Service. Meanwhile at the Forestry Inventory and Analysis program, the House proposed $37.7 million and the Senate, $27.1 million. We also saw alignment in report language for scientific and economic soil carbon research, advancements in soil carbon monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV), and forest research at USDA.
Congress seems poised to continue increasing support for a wide range of carbon removal pathways, from ready-to-deploy solutions like cover crops to more nascent technologies like direct ocean capture. Bolstered investments in carbon removal puts us on track to address our country’s outsized contributions to the climate crisis, spur innovation and potential new markets, and improve the well-being of our communities.
For more details on FY23 appropriations and report language so far, check out the Congressional Research Service’s Appropriations Status Table.
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THE MONITOR
Your dashboard for trends in carbon removal policy and funding, powered by our trackers.
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DOE expected to release DAC Hubs FOA
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Guidance on the Regional DAC Hubs Program is due out this month in the form of a funding opportunity announcement. Ahead of the announcement, catch up on a preliminary look at DOE’s vision for the program from May. (Carbon180)
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Building out a national soil carbon monitoring network
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USDA recently invested $8 million in four soil carbon monitoring projects under the Natural Resources Conservation Service to support resilient and climate-smart agriculture. (USDA)
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IRA accelerates deployment of a Wyoming DAC plant
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The IRA reformed the 45Q tax credit available for DAC projects, giving CarbonCapture the financial support needed to scale up its plans to capture and store 5 million tons of CO2 per year by 2030. (Reuters)
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Creating a market for carbon removal
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Advanced market commitments have been used for decades to innovate and develop solutions where a market does not yet exist. The same mechanism can be used for carbon removal to create demand for the cleanup of legacy emissions. (Fortune)
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