Proposed Advancing Research on Agricultural Climate Impacts Act

The 2023 proposed Advancing Research on Agricultural Climate Impacts (ARACI) Act addresses a lack of standardized methodologies for soil carbon measurement and fragmented data collection which make carbon sequestration outcomes uncertain and hard to verify. The bill also offers offers regionally-relevant data insights and on-the-ground support to American farmers to retool long-standing practices.

The bill relies on US Department of Agriculture (USDA) program offices to develop tools and guidance to help farmers accurately quantify soil carbon storage and be accordingly paid for it, whether through federal incentives or private markets.

The ARACI Act directs USDA to:

• Develop consistent and standardized soil carbon measurement methodologies,
• Leverage the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) to develop new tools for MRV of greenhouse gas emissions and carbon sequestration,
• Conduct on-farm demonstrations to improve producer understanding and adoption of soil carbon sequestration practices,
• Establish a Soil Carbon Inventory and Analysis Network led by the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) to inventory, monitor, and analyze soil carbon and greenhouse gas changes on agricultural land over time, and
• Develop and update modeling tools that allow users to estimate changes in greenhouse gas emissions and carbon sequestration as the result of implementing conservation management practices.