CLIMATE CHALLENGESGrowing the Impacts of Climate-Smart Agriculture

Published 9 August 2022

A range of ‘climate-smart’ farming practices have the potential to lower that impact, and also help sequester carbon dioxide emitted by other parts of the economy. For example, planting cover crops in between plantings of cash crops can absorb CO2 into the soil, among other benefits. However, cover crops and other climate-smart practices aren’t yet the norm.

Roughly 11 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions — mostly nitrous oxide and methane — can be traced to the nation’s agricultural sector.

A range of ‘climate-smart’ farming practices have the potential to lower that impact, and also help sequester carbon dioxide emitted by other parts of the economy. For example, planting cover crops in between plantings of cash crops can absorb CO2 into the soil, among other benefits. However, cover crops and other climate-smart practices aren’t yet the norm.

“I’m seeing more and more farmers getting on board,” said Mitchell Hora, a seventh-generation Iowa farmer, and founder and CEO of Continuum Ag. “The issue is, in the first couple years, it’s really tough. You’re changing your practices, but you’re changing your mindset as well.”

Hora was among the panelists at a recent webinar hosted by the National AcademiesScientific American, and Nature Portfolio that explored how to increase the use of climate-smart agricultural practices. Moderated by Scientific American’s Laura Helmuth and Andrea Thompson, the event was part of the annual Science on the Hill series of conversations, which connects policymakers with experts from the scientific community.

U.S. Rep. Sean Casten of Illinois, who offered opening remarks, explained how climate change is expected to affect farming in his own state and beyond it. “We are facing massive agricultural collapse if we don’t deal with climate change quickly,” he said, describing an analysis done by the University of Chicago that examined economic impacts of climate change at the county level.

“Based on current seed technology, and changes that we know are coming in temperature [and] in terms of rain and drought cycles, by mid-century, we don’t have corn that will grow in Illinois, because it’s not going to germinate in time,” he said. “These are huge problems that will disrupt the whole economy. We have got to solve this.”

Agricultural practices that store more carbon in soil can offer benefits to farmers as well as to the climate, noted Casten, but to farmers who already face challenges like volatile commodity prices and weather, they can seem a risky bet. One of policymakers’ tasks is to help de-risk those changes, he said.

U.S. Rep. John Curtis of Utah stressed the need to work with farmers as partners. “There’s very few people who understand environmentalism like our farmers, but sometimes they just speak it in a different language,” he said.