U.S. Climate Bill Would Pay Farmers to Store Carbon in Soil

[jpak]

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a3iDWJk07oM4&refer=home

Nov. 1 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. farmers can turn their dirt into cash under climate change legislation that pays them to bury pollution blamed for global warming.

The bill would create a potential $24 billion-a-year market for credits representing carbon dioxide stored in soil. Senators Joseph Lieberman, an Independent from Connecticut, and John Warner, a Virginia Republican, are co-sponsoring the measure.

``There is a political calculation here to try to increase support for climate change legislation by providing these offset subsidies, in effect, to agricultural concerns,'' said Tyson Slocum, director of the energy program at consumer advocacy group Public Citizen.

Like other climate change proposals in Congress, the bill allows utilities, refiners and manufacturers to trade credits to help meet new pollution requirements. The legislation, approved in a 4-3 vote today by a Senate subcommittee, gives farmers a stake in the potential market for emission credits.

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[donsu]

1. and what? the carbon dioxide just stays there unmoving?

sounds like a scam to me

[jpak]

2. Organic farming techniques sequester CO2 in soil organic matter

same for Terra Preta culture.

It's measurable, verifiable and a win-win situation for farmers and the atmosphere...

[amandabeech]

4. It's carbon itself that is sequestered.

Plants breath in carbon dioxide and exhale oxygen. The carbon ends up as the plant itself.

If the entire plant is not harvested, the stalks and leaves can be left on the ground to decompose or turned under. It is the carbon in the decaying plant matter that stays in the earth and can be measured.

Current industrial-style farming robs the soil of its decomposed plants, and does not provide good habitat for helpful microbes. By keeping carbon in the soil, through no-till planting, organic agriculture, planting cover crops, and recycling manure as fertilizer (like in the old days), the soil becomes much more fertile. It also will require less chemical fertilizer.

In addition, increasing the carbon content of the soil allows the soil to absorb and retain water much better than the dead soils found now in the farmbelt. As the climate warms and dries, high quality soil will be more productive if we encourage farmers to develop better soil now.

In the short term, some farmers may find their returns on investment somewhat less, because in the short term, chemical fertilizer farming is cheap and easy. If it takes financial incentives to get them to change their habits, so be it. I think that carbon credit payments will give all of us long-term gains.

[razzleberry]

3. the carbon offset scam goes on and on .n/t.

[Kolesar]

5. Having produce grown close to the markets where they are consumed would be a better vision...

...for an agricultural policy than this. Removing incentives for livestock production would be better policy than this.

[razzleberry]

8. what 'incentives' would that be? .n/t.

[Kolesar]

10. Feed corn is subsidized by $Billions/year. Federal land is leased to ranchers at below-market prices

In all fairness, the subsidies go to *all* corn production, but since most corn goes to feeding livestock and not humans, that multi-billion dollar sum is a subsidy for livestock.

Ranchers can lease federal land for much less than they would have to lease private land. That means that they get the taxpayer to subsidize their grazing and the water for the animals for that matter. That is an industry that would collapse if the subsidies were removed.

[razzleberry]

11. can you be specific, what subsidies on corn?

rates?
amounts paid this year?
links?

[Kolesar]

13. Corn

www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22corn+is+subsidized%22+billions

FIRST LINK:
http://www.mulchblog.com/2007/07/corn_and_the_pelosi_farm_bill.php

Again, it's ethanol. And with the push to expand the industry even more, the Congressional Budget Office projected in March that corn would not be getting any of the subsidies that are tied to various price triggers set by Congress in the 2002 farm bill. Why? Because the ethanol-driven demand for corn is so strong that market prices are projected to remain above the government triggers. Of course, if the price falls below the levels Congress has set, those price-related corn subsidies would flow once again.

So that means we won't be providing subsidies to corn farmers, right? Far from it.

Under the Pelosi farm bill, on top of record income corn farmers will earn from the market, taxpayers will be obligated to continue providing an automatic $2 billion per year in "direct payments" to corn farmers. These are subsidies paid regardless of price or income conditions.

Pure and simple, it's a windfall subsidy of $10 billion from taxpayers to corn farmers over the next five years.

THE FARM SUBSIDY DATABASE: http://farm.ewg.org/farm/

[kestrel91316]

12. Using the rebuilding of depleted soil organic matter to tie up CO2

IS NO SCAM. Half our problem is that we have stopped doing it over the past hundred years.

It should be the sacred DUTY of everyone who works the land. Period.

[NNadir]

6. Gotta love those 'pukes. From Governor Hydrogen Hummer to Holy Joe they're

just brimming with practical realistic approaches to climate change.

[GliderGuider]

7. I'd love to see subsidies to farmers for tilling in charcoal.

Talk about a win/win/win/win. Carbon get sequestered, farmers make subsidy money, their yields go up and their NPK inputs drop...

Much more direct and effective than this "plant waste" BS. Best of all, it would be useful even in the absence of the carbon credit shell game.

[razzleberry]

9. perhaps the enlightened of the world could go first

by enlightened, I mean this equation.

Enlightened = (the world) - (the US)

the US might follow when the program succeeds.
somebody has to go first