Source: POLITICO'S MORNING AGRICULTURE, 3/29/21

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has his sights set on creating a massive carbon credit bank, aiming to confront climate change in a way that also boosts farmers’ bottom lines. But the USDA chief faces a difficult task of bringing both the right and left flanks of the agriculture sector on board, POLITICO’s Zack Colman, Liz Crampton and Helena Bottemiller Evich report.

Doubts abound: A carbon bank is one of Washington’s most ambitious attempts to curb global warming by making certain changes. One could involve paying farmers to plant extra crops (for instance, products like cereal rye and clover) that suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and bury it in soil. Some environmentalists, however, doubt it would make a big enough dent in climate change, especially compared to existing conservation programs.

Farmers and ranchers worry that big agribusinesses and financial institutions will reap most of the monetary benefits from the carbon market. The industry also remains generally wary of any action on climate change that could affect producers’ bottom lines.
The timeline: USDA is planning to take some action by the end of 2021, according to a senior official, who told POLITICO that the department aims to strike a balance between “moving really quickly and also being deliberate enough that we can bring folks along with us.”

Convincing Congress: There’s an ongoing debate between Vilsack and top Republicans, including Senate Agriculture ranking member John Boozman (Ark.), as to whether USDA has authority to create a carbon bank through the Commodity Credit Corporation. The loosely restricted $30 billion fund, intended to bolster the farm economy, was used to pay producers burned by the Trump administration’s trade war and supply chain disruptions during the pandemic.

“USDA believes they have the legal authority,” said Andrew Walmsley, director of congressional relations for the Farm Bureau. “I don’t know if they have the political authority. That’s important.”