Source: MEATINGPLACE, 5/16/16

USDA outlined a number of steps taken toward reaching its climate change mitigation goals in an annual progress report, including projects with livestock operations.

The agency aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by more than 120 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent by 2025 — about two percent of economy-wide emissions — through a set of voluntary programs and initiatives. Among its goals, USDA intends to install impermeable covers and flares on 10 percent of dairy cattle and swine operations.

In 2015, USDA and partner agencies:
— Awarded $12.5 million in grants and loans to support the installation of 17 anaerobic digesters and biogas systems in California, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, North Carolina, Ohio and Washington. The systems are projected to generate over 167,000 megawatt hours of renewable power annually.
— Awarded a biogas system planning grant of almost $54,000 through the Value Added Producer Grant program.
— Funded nine anaerobic digesters through the first quarter of 2016 under the Environmental Quality Incentives Program.
— Provided $1.8 million in funding to the Interagency Agriculture Council and its partners to integrate conservation stewardship projects with activities that reduce greenhouse gas emissions, specifically on tribal rangelands in Alaska, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oklahoma and South Dakota.
— Funded projects related to grazing and pasturelands — one to expand the use of management intensive grazing in the Chesapeake Bay watershed, and another to improve the viability of greenhouse gas emissions markets for range and pasturelands across California, Oregon, Washington, Texas and Hawaii.

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