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Agricultural Land Conservation

MCLI Recommendation: “Congress should prioritize funding for conservation programs that offer the greatest climate benefits while reducing or eliminating funding that benefits environmentally harmful operations.”

LPDD Recommendation: “Congress should substantially expand ACEP and ensure that protecting environmentally sensitive lands that provide the greatest climate benefits is among the program’s priorities. Congress should eliminate the ACEP’s long-term easement option. Congress should expand ACEP to allow for easements on additional types of environmentally sensitive land, allowing USDA to protect terrestrial carbon pools in a wider variety of ecosystems.”

LPDD Recommendation: “Congress should expand funding for the CRP, while also reforming the CRP to provide sustained climate benefits by offering farmers 30-year agreements or permanent easements, targeting lands with the most significant climate-change mitigation and adaptation potential.”

LPDD Recommendation: “Congress should expand funding for the CSP to prioritize climate-beneficial activities like cover crops and resource-conserving crop rotations and ensure that they receive a higher, supplemental payment.”

LPDD Recommendation: “Congress should expand the required practices for conservation compliance to include those that protect soil carbon and water.”

LPDD Recommendation: “Congress should increase funding for the Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program, which gives farmers higher payments for participating in targeted conservation efforts organized by state and local officials.”

LPDD Recommendation: “Congress should lower the EQIP payment cap for all animal feeding operations, or at a minimum, create a lower cap for such operations. Congress should modify EQIP by requiring greater representation of sustainable farming approaches on working groups and allocating more funds—or a larger cost-share percentage—to practices demonstrated to have the greatest benefits. Congress should redirect EQIP funds, to the extent possible, to support farms and ranches working to significantly reduce emissions or sequester carbon.”

LPDD Recommendation: “Congress should reform the RFS to support only those biofuels with significant climate benefits.”

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12 resources

Resource Congress

Proposed Agriculture Resilience Act (2020)

The proposed Agriculture Resilience Act of 2020 would set a target of reaching net-zero greenhouse gas emissions in U.S. agriculture by the year 2040. It would pursue this target by: Increasing Resear...
Example Executive Branch

Conservation Stewardship Program

The CSP pays farmers to improve, maintain, or adopt conservation practices on their farms. Farmers are paid annually under a five-year contract with the option to renew for an additional five years if...
Resource Congress

Report, An Introduction to Conservation Easements in the United States: A Simple Concept and Complicated Mosaic of Law

Cheever and McLaughlin’s 2015 article surveys the complex body of state and federal law that shapes the creation, funding, tax treatment, enforcement, modification, and termination of conservation eas...
Resource Executive Branch

National Conservation Easement Database

The NCED contains records for more than 130,000 conservation easements encumbering more than 24 million acres of land.
Example Congress

Renewable Biomass Restrictions under the Renewable Fuel Standard

Under the federal Renewable Fuel Standard, Congress has directed EPA to exclude crops “harvested from land cleared or cultivated” after December 19, 2007 from its definition of “renewable biomass.” Th...
Example Congress

Prohibition on federally supported agriculture on erodible land or wetlands

16 USC §3811 and §3821 prohibit farms from producing agricultural products on highly erodible land without a conservation plan, and on unconverted wetlands, respectively, if that land receives support...
Resource Congress

Report, Conservation Easements and Climate Change

Aaronson and Manuel’s 2008 report notes how the current law of conservation easements does not recognize the full potential for carbon capture resulting from land conservation, in part because the tax...
Example Executive Branch

Conservation Resource Program

The USDA’s Conservation Resource Program accounts for approximately 37% of conservation spending. It pays farmers to take environmentally sensitive land out of agricultural production for 10-15 years....
Resource Congress

EQIP Improvement Act

The EQIP Improvement Act, introduced in 2018, would prioritize EQIP funding at the state and county level for the most effective conservation practices, while also reducing the maximum cost-sharing fr...
Example Executive Branch

Environmental Quality Incentives Program

The Environmental Quality Incentives Program provides financial assistance to farmers who adopt or install conservation practices on land in agricultural production. Common practices include nutrient ...
Resource Executive Branch

USDA Conservation Programs Background

The USDA Economic Research Service provides a primer on existing USDA conservation programs, including the CRP, ACEP, EQIP, CSP, and more.
Example Executive Branch

Agricultural Conservation Easement Program

The Agricultural Conservation Easement Program is designed to protect wetlands, grasslands, and productive farmland. The National Resource Conservation service, which oversees the ACEP program, pays f...