Land Core Publishes Soil Health & Agriculture Policy Recommendations for Biden-Harris Administration
Urging Transition Team to Put Soil Health First
Healthy soils in the US hold significant opportunities for carbon sequestration on working lands, but that is only the beginning. They are also a vital path to resilience and prosperity for our producers, and restore critical natural resources (by reversing erosion, replenishing fresh water sources and restoring biodiversity). Soil health is key to a healthy, equitable food system for all citizens and ensures the long term viability of our national food security. In healthy soils, we have a non-partisan, keystone issue that provides the common ground to move America forward.
Land Core is an independent 501(c)3 organization that works closely with the USDA, legislators, producers, soil scientists, NGOs and financial institutions across the country to develop policy recommendations that build healthy soils, resilient farmers and national food security. This includes guiding the successful passage of language in both the House and Senate supporting soil health outcomes at the USDA and to secure over $50M in federal investment in Soil Health in the 2018 Farm Bill.
The following recommendations have been designed to provide specific guidance to the Biden Administration and are organized by executive, legislative and agency actions. We urge the administration to act swiftly on the rapid erosion of US soils - which is jeopardizing our producers, food supply and environment - and to build on the broad support for the soil health movement by adopting these practical, non-partisan priorities and policies.
In healthy soils, we have a non-partisan, keystone issue that provides the common ground to move America forward.
Executive Priorities
We urge the Biden-Harris Administration to incorporate the broad principles of soil health and associated “nature-based” solutions into a broad array of critical issues that face our nation. Whether through executive orders, agency priority setting, or proposed legislation, these are the priorities we encourage the administration to support.
Include soil health as a priority for all relevant agencies as an essential tool to address: agricultural resilience, rural prosperity, risk mitigation (against increased flood, drought, wildfires related to climate change), carbon sequestration, biodiversity loss and ecological restoration.
Key agencies: USDA, EPA, DOI/BLM, FEMA, HUD, USACE
Incorporate soil health into infrastructure, stimulus, and green jobs bills.
Promote holistically-managed, pasture-based livestock systems as an essential tool for soil carbon sequestration, water security, ecosystem restoration and risk mitigation on federal lands.
Key agencies: USDA, DOI/BLM
Legislative Action
Below are Land Core’s legislative priorities – specific and achievable actions that can be taken up by Congress – along with examples of existing legislation that attempt to address various aspects of these priorities. Land Core is not specifically endorsing the legislation below, but rather highlighting that many of the solutions we view as critical are shared by an array of legislators who are actively engaged in this work. We hope that these priorities will be supported, prioritized, adopted and adapted by this administration.
Build Missing Infrastructure:
Create a voluntarily, Outcomes-Verified Soil Health Program that allows farmers and ranchers to measure and verify their soil health (via soil sampling and remote sensing) using consistent baseline standards set by the USDA-NRCS, in order to:
Facilitate market-based incentives such as supply chain integration, carbon/ecosystem services markets, potential tax credits and preferential lending (based on verified, risk mitigation or carbon sequestration outcomes).
Relevant language: Explanatory language, Land Core
Incentives for Producers:
Expand access to insurance for diversified and specialty food production systems and for small to medium-sized producers (through plans like Whole-Farm Revenue Protection) to increase crop diversity and soil health.
Offer preferential crop insurance products and rates for producers demonstrating risk mitigation through improved soil health outcomes (eg. soil carbon and water infiltration rates).
Relevant agencies: RMA, NRCS, FSA
Categorize USDA-NRCS conservation practices that build soil health as RMA "Good Farming Practices" and remove restrictions on conservation practices that build soil health.
Relevant legislation: S. 3479 - Cover Crop Flexibility Act of 2020, Sen. Thune (R-SD)
Create a nature-based tax incentive for farmers, ranchers and foresters who sequester or abate carbon dioxide equivalents in the land sector, modeled on Section 45Q of the tax code.
Relevant language: Discussion Draft Text, Sen. Bennet (D-CO)
Provide incentives for producers to apply soil health practices, including through expanded funding for USDA's working lands conservation programs: Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) (including Conservation Innovation Grants: On-Farm Conservation and Innovation Trials and Soil Health Demonstration Trials), Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP), Regional Conservation Partnership Program (RCPP) and Conservation Reserve Program (CRP).
Offer preferential loans through USDA-FSA for producers demonstrating risk-mitigation through improved soil health outcomes (eg. soil carbon and water infiltration rates).
Relevant legislation: H.R.8057 - Healthy Soil, Resilient Farmers Act of 2020, Rep. Spanberger (D-VA-07)
Provide tax incentives to improve access to farmland for young, beginning and historically disadvantaged farmers and ranchers who overwhelmingly use soil health principles in their operations.
Public and Private Sector Investment
Direct or incentivize public and private financial institutions to provide preferential agricultural lending based on potential risk mitigation from soil health management plans or demonstrated risk mitigation through improved soil health outcomes.
Expand the tax code to offer tax incentives for private investors seeking to develop regional-level food processing infrastructure such as slaughterhouses, mills and seed cleaning facilities that support the economic pathway for rural development and diversified soil health focused farm operations.
Provide funding to organizations that facilitate farmland succession planning, agricultural easement agreements, and long-term agricultural land leases that prioritize soil health outcomes.
Research and Development
Invest in research, development and distribution/access of soil health measurement, monitoring and modeling tools, including satellite/remote observations and regional-scale ground truthing.
Fund research to assess and quantify the risk mitigation impacts of healthy soils related to: flood, drought, pest, fire and the specific correlation of practices to outcomes, in order to enable more impactful and focused public and private investment in soil health.
Fund research to quantify the environmental benefits of soil health practices and conservation activities in order to demonstrate their impact and further improve program performance regarding on-farm productivity, soil health, and water quality.
Relevant legislation: S.3429 - Farmer Driven Conservation Outcomes Act of 2020
Education and Training
Develop and fund a "train the trainer curriculum" for USDA-NRCS, land grants and universities, including Historically Black and Tribal colleges and universities, prioritizing the importance of soil health and biological diversity in cropping and rangeland systems.
Use the curriculum to facilitate the creation of an online training program for the purposes of providing required continuing education for all NRCS field agents and all other relevant USDA department staff. Make a public-facing version for farmers and ranchers as well as partner organizations such as Certified Crop Advisors, etc.
Expand funding for land grants and universities, including Historically Black and Tribal colleges and universities, to focus on soil health, soil carbon sequestration, regional application of soil health practices, and seed breeding/saving for climate adaptation, resilience and nutrition.
Relevant legislation: S.4850 - Healthy Soils Healthy Climate Act of 2020, Sen. Wyden (D-OR)
Agency Priorities and Actions
There is enormous opportunity to advance critical infrastructure for the scaled adoption of soil health in the U.S. through non-legislative actions that can be initiated by setting agency priorities and executive orders. Land Core has worked directly with agencies at the USDA over the last four years. Many of the proposals below are aligned with their existing objectives; the agencies simply have not been given the direction needed to enact them.
The incoming administration will have the opportunity to radically transform how we support our producers in their transition to a more resilient, profitable, productive and ecologically sound U.S. agriculture.
Direct USDA-NRCS to establish a consistent set of soil health indicators, consistent in-field sampling methodology, lab calibration protocols and recommendations for the use of satellite observations, and other complementary, remote-sensing, real-time monitoring technologies.
Direct USDA-NRCS to restore their historical role in providing on-farm technical assistance to producers, with a strong focus on building soil health and soil carbon.
Direct USDA-ARS, ERS, the Climate Hubs (and other relevant agencies) to conduct inter-agency research (supplemented with private sector data sets as necessary) to quantify the risk mitigation benefits of healthy soil and develop a predictive model of risk.
Direct USDA-RMA to recognize the role of soil health in reducing risk associated with droughts, floods, extreme temperatures, pests and disease.
Direct USDA-NRCS to revitalize the National Resources Inventory's Soil Monitoring Network, a national-scale network of sites sampled and analyzed periodically to track changes in soil properties (in conjunction with the Web Soil Survey) essential for building accurate models for agricultural and climate risk, and to serve as a baseline for regionally-appropriate soil health benchmarks.
Direct BLM to prioritize granting licenses for holistically-managed grazing of livestock on public lands.
Direct USDA-NRCS to provide and prioritize training for ranchers currently using public lands to create a holistic management plan / healthy soils plan.
Direct USDA-NRCS to add composting, biochar and organic amendments to the list of Conservation Practice Standards. (Also see: H.R. 6023 the “COMPOST Act” Rep. Julia Brownley, D-CA-26th District)
Direct USDA-NRCS to update the Conservation Practice Standards for "Rotational Grazing" to reflect best practices in Planned Grazing. i.e. "Adaptive multi-paddock grazing". (See Dr. Richard Teague, Texas A&M Agrilife Center).
Recognize when traditional indigenous conservation practices on tribal land are substantively equivalent to NRCS Conservation Practice Standards and thus are eligible for funding from federal programs.
This is a non-exhaustive set of policies and actions that can yield vital returns towards the Biden Administration’s commitments to take bold climate action, create new jobs and revitalize rural and urban communities alike. We invite questions and the opportunity to expand on these recommendations.
Contact: Aria McLauchlan, Co-Founder & Executive Director, aria@landcore.org