NFU: U.S. House Releases Climate Action Plan
In response to the mounting challenges caused by a rapidly changing climate, the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis this week published a report outlining an economy-wide blueprint to both mitigate the threat of climate change and adapt to its effects.
The plan recognizes not only the threat climate change presents to agriculture, but also the role that family farmers and ranchers must play in the solution. Specifically, it calls for:
- providing financial and technical support for on-farm conservation practices that sequester carbon and build resilience to extreme weather events
- promoting crop and livestock management practices and technologies that reduce agriculture’s greenhouse gas emissions
- supporting on-farm renewable energy production and efficiency
- ensuring the success of young, beginning, and socially disadvantaged agricultural producers
- protecting farmland from development
- reducing food waste and the distance between food production and consumption
On top of its agricultural-specific provisions, the plan also includes support for rural communities. This includes expanding public transportation, strengthening infrastructure so it can withstand increasingly extreme weather, improving energy efficiency in rural businesses and establishments, and expanding rural broadband to facilitate smart grid technologies and improve reliability in the case of disaster.
In a statement of support, National Farmers Union (NFU) President Rob Larew said he was “encouraged to see the comprehensive consideration. . . of how to best use USDA conservation, research, energy, and other programs” to meet the growing challenge of climate change, which he called the “single greatest threat facing family farmers and the global food supply.”
Read the full report here.