The centuries of America’s farming history are built upon a tradition of innovative responses to the challenges of modernity. Responses to these challenges have created a food system that’s use of fossil fuels produces one-fifth of our national greenhouse gas emissions.
These emissions are taking their toll on American agriculture through billions of dollars in annual costs with even more dramatic and permanent damage on the horizon. Despite this modern challenge, cutting-edge scientific research and farm innovation suggest a hopeful future for agriculture.
Our farms can cut and eliminate fossil fuel inputs while mitigating climate change by pulling carbon out of the air and into the soil.
Rich, healthy soil is full of black colored carbon. When farmers build healthy soil, they are putting the black back into the soil — pulling carbon from the air and storing it in the earth. When farmers build carbon in their soils, they begin to clean our climate system and provide other benefits to our society, including improved biodiversity, better water management, increased food security and improving resiliency and sustainability of our food system.
In these tough economic times, we need to develop solutions that will build our industries up, not tear them down. What’s more, the agriculture sector doesn’t just have to be victim to the effects of climate change; it can be part of the solution to the crisis. Farmers can sequester carbon in the soil, and they should be paid handsomely for it.
For farmers, there also are increased income opportunities. In fact, a July 22 USDA economic analysis of the American Clean Energy and Security Act determined the benefits to farmers from added income opportunities far outweigh any costs associated to them with creating a clean energy economy.
The new clean energy economy created by climate legislation should pay farmers for sequestering carbon in the soil. Farmers who build into their soil organic carbon could make hundreds of dollars per acre. The transition to a clean energy economy nationwide will create millions of jobs and set us on the path to economic recovery.
If God gave us this Earth, and the Bible tells us we are to be good stewards of it, we can no longer afford to wait.
A clean energy economy is the key to preserving our farming families, our communities and our way of life. Efforts to transition our country from the dependence on polluting carbon-based fuels — and out of this economic recession — are being thwarted by well-funded corporate entities and those protecting the status quo.
The truth endures: We can’t afford to keep giving polluters a free pass to poison the water we drink and the air we breathe.
Our agricultural industry has always responded to challenges to further improve the food supply and system to provide for the future of our citizens. The newest challenge it faces is to embrace the responsibility for the health of our nation’s people and our nation’s economy.
By paying farmers to build carbon in their soils, we can help them create healthy soils and a healthy climate system. Now is the time to stand together to ensure future generations and future farmers are preserved for centuries to come by passing a green energy bill that will reduce excess carbon emissions.
The Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act is being considered in Congress. The bill puts a cap on excess carbon and begins the transition to our new energy future — one that relies on clean, renewable energy. We hope we can count on Sens. Specter and Casey to support it.
Our country’s future depends on it.
Eliav Bitan is a policy associate at Rodale Institute. Ed Perry is global warming outreach coordinator at the National Wildlife Federation.