From Today’s news — a good thing at USDA. We should call this progress, no pie in the sky, but rather tangible ways to help farmers move forward.
A USDA grant of $95 mil. was recently awarded to the Farmers for Soil Health initiative. The funding comes from USDA’s new Partnerships for Climate Smart Commodities program. Jack Cornell of the United Soybean Board says, “This funding is geared towards increasing productivity and sustainability practices. We’re looking at distributing this money to 20 different states that make up 85% of the corn/soybean acres grown. We aim to get 30 million acres of cover crops by 2030.”
Farmers for Soil Health is a joint effort by the United Soybean Board, National Corn Growers Association, and the National Pork Board. Cornell calls the partnership an exciting collaboration, “As everybody knows, we’re farmer-led, farmer-focused organizations, so we’ll be the ultimate stewards of this program. While we have a metric goal of getting 30 million acres of cover crops by 2030, it’s not a cover crop program; it’s not the main focus. It’s getting this funding back down to the farm level where the conservation efforts are happening.”
Cornell adds the grant could also support other conservation and marketing programs benefitting farmers through their soy checkoff, “The other elements of this program are looking at state commodity groups that have projects going on at their level, and maybe they want enhancements for their conservation efforts and sustainability programs; we could also help them to create new ones. We also have opportunities we’re developing with a market development platform. Part of this is to help farmers sign up for this program and have buyers on the other end who want to buy commodities raised under certain practices.”
Editor’s note: I spent eight years at USDA during the Obama Administration. One of my favorite proposals I wanted to do then relates to this exact project. Then, we needed to study how we could help farmers learn to grow more sustainably and help them be ready for the changes that climate change was, and is, demanding. Certainly, USDA’s scientists had lots of information that could have helped, but the idea that we would actually help farmers learn new farming practices was heretical. This is to send a big CONGRATS! to the Biden Administration for this program. There is still much more that needs to be done, but this is a good start.