State and federal leaders have put millions into improving crops and soils so they absorb more carbon dioxide, but across the U.S. that would only cut 3% of agricultural emissions, researchers found.

Producers could see three new revenue streams from climate mitigation, he said. They were income from carbon markets, from conversion of agricultural waste into products ranging from chemicals to fabrics, and capture of methane from manure for use as a renewable fuel.

The new era of climate mitigation on the farm would look like a beefed-up version of longstanding USDA conservation programs, augmented by a carbon bank that sets a floor price for carbon sequestration and reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, said leaders of the Food and Agriculture Climate Alliance (FACA) on Wednesday. “That’s what we’ve modeled it after,” said Chuck Connor, a founding member of the alliance and a former deputy agriculture secretary.

Trey Hill uses clover, lentils, and rye as cover crops, and radishes and turnips for root crops as sequestration and regeneration agents in his corn field. Recently Hill’s farm of 10,000 acres sold its carbon credits for $16.50 per ton, through a Seattle-based startup called Nori, which allows companies and individuals to buy carbon credits to offset their own carbon emissions.

While some similar carbon-credit programs for agriculture have been announced, many still rely on broad estimates of carbon improvements over many acres, due to the difficulty and cost of verification and validation. It’s essential that any system of carbon-credit farming is built on clear, science-based standards tied to real-world results.

Insiders say the new administration wants to use the money to tackle climate change, potentially by establishing a carbon bank that pays farmers to store carbon in their soil.

One topic most red, blue, and green politicians — and, even more strikingly, farmers — agree on is climate change; it’s real.In fact, notes the Dec. 2020 Iowa Farm and Rural Life Poll, 58 percent of …

This is not the solution to our climate problems; it's a sweetheart deal for Big Ag.