The Farm Bill is the most important climate bill this Congress will pass

In this episode, Peter Lehner, head of the food and farming
sustainability program at Earthjustice, gives his expert
perspective on the upcoming Farm Bill and its potential impact on
agricultural decarbonization in the US.


(PDF
transcript)


(Active
transcript)


Text transcript:


David Roberts


As longtime subscribers know — indeed, as the name makes plain —
Volts is primarily focused on the energy side the climate fight.
I haven't paid much attention to agriculture over the years. I
understand that agriculture is a huge piece of the puzzle, both
for decarbonization and for sustainability more generally. It's
just not really been my jam.


However! The Farm Bill — which requires reauthorization every
five years — is likely to pass in coming months, and it is
arguably the most important climate bill Congress will address
this session.


To talk me through the agriculture/climate nexus and discuss
opportunities in the upcoming Farm Bill, I contacted Peter
Lehner. He is the head of Earthjustice’s food and farming
sustainability program, and the author of Farming for Our Future:
The Science, Law, and Policy of Climate-Neutral Agriculture.


We talked about how US agriculture has evaded environmental laws
and become the source of 30 percent of US greenhouse gas
emissions, ways that the upcoming Farm Bill can be tweaked to
better fight climate change, and what's next for agriculture
decarbonization.


Peter Lehner of Earthjustice, welcome to Volts. Thank you so much
for coming on.


Peter Lehner


Great to be here, Dave.


David Roberts


As you may know, if you have read my work over the years or
followed me at all, I'm pretty heavily, deeply into the energy
world as the source of most of my time and attention in the
climate fight. I know on some level, partially because I've been
lectured by people numerous times over the years, that
agriculture is a big piece of the puzzle — and land use and
oceans, which are other things that I also don't spend much time
on. And I fully acknowledge that they're important, they're just
not my personal passion. However, I've felt vaguely guilty about
that for years.


And I know the Farm Bill is coming up, which is a significant
marker, I think, possibly the source of some significant action.
We'll discuss that in a while. But at the very least a good
excuse, I think, for me to check in and just sort of see like,
what's the state of climate and agriculture, you know, action
stuff, what's going on there? So, that's what you're here for,
Peter, because you are the expert author of a book on the
subject, numerous podcasts, been studying this for a long time.
So before we get into the Farm Bill, just maybe — I know that the
subject of the ties between agriculture and climate and carbon
and methane greenhouse gases is very complicated.


You've written entire books on the subject. But I wonder, for
people like me who have had their nose mostly in the energy
world, if you could just summarize relatively quickly what are
the big kind of buckets where agriculture overlaps with carbon
and decarbonization and climate generally? What are the big areas
of concern that people should have their eyes on?


Peter Lehner


Sure, you know, I should say, Dave, that I came to this really
the same as you. I'd been working on energy issues for a very
long time. For three decades, I've sued many power plants. I've
worked on many different environmental laws dealing with
regulation of the power sector. And what happened is, over time,
doing general environmental law for New York State, for NRDC, for
Earthjustice where I am now, I kept seeing the impact of
agriculture as really being enormous and impeding our ability to
achieve our environmental and health goals unless it was
addressed. So that's why I'm focusing on this now.


But like you, I think most environmentalists focus much more on
the industrial sector, the power sector, the transportation
sector. And part of what I've come to realize is that we all
should pay a lot more attention to the agriculture sector. And
we'll talk about the Farm Bill coming up. But really the Farm
Bill is the biggest environmental law Congress will address that
most people have never heard of. Now why is that? So, I'll tell
you quickly. First, agriculture uses most of our land. It uses
about two thirds of the contiguous U.S.


David Roberts


Can I pause you there?


Peter Lehner


Sure.


David Roberts


That took me two or three seconds to catch up with that before my
mind blew. Two thirds of the land of the contiguous United States
is devoted to agriculture?


Peter Lehner


62%, yeah. And that's about using rounder numbers, about 400
million acres of cropland. About half of that is used to grow
food that people eat, and about half of that is growing food that
animals eat. And close to 800 million acres of grazing land, some
of that is federal land, some of that is state land. A lot of
that is private land. But all told, it's over a billion acres of
land, almost all in the lower 48 is used for agriculture.


David Roberts


That is wild.


Peter Lehner


So think about it. If you fly anywhere and look out the window,
what do you see? You really see agriculture, whether it be the
irrigation circles or just the fields or whatever. That's what
has transformed our landscape. And part of the result of that, of
course, is agriculture is really the biggest driver of
biodiversity loss. So much of biodiversity loss is habitat loss.
And look, I've spent decades working on issues like grizzly bears
and wolves. But what those issues are at bottom is agriculture
because we are grazing in grizzly and wolf territory. And so much
of habitat loss, whether it be land or polluted waters, is
driving other biodiversity loss.


So in addition to that, what I was going to mention is the
environmental laws that you're probably familiar with, Clean Air
Act, Clean Water Act have actually done a pretty good job of
addressing air and water pollution from industrial sources, from
the energy sector. But they really have not done a very good job
addressing air and water pollution from agriculture, whether it
be these hundreds of millions of acres of row crops. Or these
hundreds of million acres of grazing. Or these more industrial
scale facilities where thousands or tens of thousands or even
hundreds of thousands of animals are crammed together into
buildings — those are called concentrated animal feeding
operations. Those are now the largest source of water pollution
in the country.


David Roberts


Did the laws pass over them or just inadequately address them?


Peter Lehner


A little bit of both. What happened was in 1972, say, when the
Clean Water Act was passed, Congress really wasn't thinking that
much about agriculture. But also agriculture has changed
tremendously since then. It has become so much more industrial.
So that a small number of facilities that are gargantuan produce,
for example, almost all of our meat, but those didn't exist in
1970. And as you probably know, in the Clean Water Act, it did a
good job dealing with pollution coming out of a pipe. But
pollution, say, coming off of city streets, that's called
non-point source pollution.


The regulation was much less strong, and they relied more on
grants and education and sort of nudges, as we say. And much of
agriculture — 400 million acres of cropland, 800 million acres of
grazing land — that's not, by and large, water pollution coming
out of a pipe. So essentially, the Clean Water Act doesn't cover
it. And similarly, the Clean Air Act does a great job of
addressing stuff coming out of smokestacks. And while there's
some, like from these concentrated animal feeding operations,
there's very concentrated air pollution coming out of the vents.
But out of all of those acres of cropland and grazing land, those
are called area sources under the Clean Air Act and are addressed
much, much less.


But still, air pollution from agriculture, I bet this would
surprise most of your readers, kills about 17,000 people a year.
It's a major source of air pollution in this country.


And that is mostly methane or other criteria pollutants?


Methane is actually one of the ways agriculture drives climate
change. It's actually other pollutants, largely ammonia and
hydrogen sulfide, which come from overfertilization and animal
waste. And ammonia is a major precursor to the fine particulate
matter that gets into our lungs and causes disease and kills us.


David Roberts


Which we're finding out, as I've covered on the pod, is worse.
You known, every time a new round of science comes out, we find
out it's worse than we thought.


Peter Lehner


Yeah. And in a place like, say, the San Joaquin Valley in central
California, which has some of the worst air quality in the
country, almost all of that PM, that fine particulate matter, is
driven by animal agriculture.


David Roberts


And I'm also going to guess maybe you're going to get to this,
but that when you take wild land and make it into agricultural
land, the land subsequently captures and holds less carbon.


Peter Lehner


Much less carbon. So one of the reasons why I think people don't
realize that agriculture drives about as much climate change as
our transportation sector is — and think about that for a minute,
it drives as much climate change as our transportation sector —
and yet most of the time there are conversations about climate
change and conversations about agriculture. But until recently,
those have been two separate conversations. Say in 2018, when we
were working on the Farm Bill then, there was virtually no
discussion of climate change in the 2018 Farm Bill.


David Roberts


I'll admit I don't think of it that way in the mental category in
my head when I'm thinking about major sources.


Peter Lehner


Yeah, well, why is that? I think that's because when we think
about climate change, most people think about climate change, you
think about burning fossil fuels and releasing carbon dioxide.


David Roberts


Right.


Peter Lehner


And that's climate change for most people. Agriculture's
contribution to climate change has some of that. Agriculture uses
actually a fair amount of energy for, say, irrigation and
tractors and of course, food processing later on down the road.
But most of agriculture's contribution to climate change is from
other sources.


David Roberts


Right. Which is to say that even if we clean up energy sources,
which everybody is working on, and even if the energy inputs to
agriculture, you drive the tractors with whatever, electric
tractors or electric irrigators, whatever, even if it's zero
carbon energy fueling agriculture, that still leaves most of
agriculture's contribution to climate change untouched.


Peter Lehner


Exactly, that's true. And even more frightening, even if we do
clean up our energy system and our industrial system to a no
carbon situation where we hope to of course, that's where we're
putting so much effort into, we will still almost certainly face
catastrophic climate change because of the contribution of
agriculture alone. In other words, if we do everything else
perfectly and we don't change our agriculture system and don't
address agriculture's contribution to climate change, we are
blowing past 1.5 degrees centigrade, blowing past two degrees.


David Roberts


So you think just taking the U.S.: The U.S. can't meet its stated
Paris climate targets without reforming agriculture?


Peter Lehner


That's basically correct. So let me explain a minute why this is
the case. Agriculture's contribution to climate change: First,
think about methane, which you've mentioned most people think
about methane, oil and gas, right?


David Roberts


Yeah.


Peter Lehner


Actually, cows and animal agriculture emit more methane in the
U.S. and around the world than the oil and gas sector. Most of
that methane is called enteric methane. It's essentially belching
and exhaling of cows. And their stomachs are different than ours.
That's why they can eat grass in a way that you and I can't. But
every time they breathe out, they're breathing out a lot of
methane. So that is an enormous source of methane, which I'm sure
your listeners know is more than 80 times more potent a
greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide over 20 years.


David Roberts


Nobody thought they're innovating a better cow, are they? That
seems like fewer cows is the only solution to that. I mean, maybe
we're going to touch on solutions later so maybe we should save
this. But just like that doesn't seem like a technologically
solvable problem. You just need fewer cows.


Peter Lehner


Most studies have shown that fewer cows, and therefore the
consequent part of that is shifting diets to less beef-heavy is
one of the fastest, most effective and cost-effective climate
strategies and really has to be a part of any strategy. There are
things you can do. Breeding has reduced the methane emissions per
pound of beef. The way you raise the cows can make a difference.
The way you graze them can make a difference. How long they live
before they're slaughtered can make a difference. There is some
research into feed additives that you'd feed cows, and that
changes the bacteria in their gut to produce a little less
methane.


David Roberts


Oh, interesting.


Peter Lehner


And all of these are important. There's not one solution. But I
think what is unfortunate is sometimes it's viewed by industry as
only a technical solution. And the reality is it has to be both
technical and essentially demand side. So, the other way methane
is produced is manure. There's all those animals. We've got about
50 times more waste produced by animals than by humans in the
United States.


David Roberts


50 times more?


Peter Lehner


Yeah. Those animals produce a lot of waste. One dairy cow, for
example, can produce about as much waste as 200 people.


David Roberts


Jesus Christ.


Peter Lehner


So all that waste, most of it sits in lagoons or essentially is
handled in such a way that it creates a lot of methane. So that's
another way that methane is produced and agriculture contributes
to climate change.


David Roberts


When people talk about lagoons, I just want to clarify here, they
just take all the manure and slough it into a giant pond of
manure where it then sits. Is that what people are talking about
when they talk about lagoons? There's not any fancy technical.
It's just a big pool full of crap.


Peter Lehner


That's basically correct. And that's the dominant way in both pig
farms and dairy farms, we handle our waste. To get technical,
when you put the manure into a big pit like this, because it's
wet, there's water, it's transported by water, it is anaerobic.
That means it doesn't have oxygen. So as it decomposes, it
releases methane. And that is a really significant source of
methane all around the country and contributes both locally, but
also obviously, majorly to climate change. And I should say rice,
also, rice production, also, if you think about it again, you
have the image of a rice patty, it's flooded. So you have organic
matter decomposing in an anaerobic, without oxygen, system
releasing methane. But by far, most methane is from cow belching.


David Roberts


That's the big source.


Peter Lehner


Yes.


David Roberts


Bigger than manure.


Peter Lehner


Bigger than manure. Although manure is also very big, I don't
want to minimize that. And the two together, again, are more than
the oil and gas sector.


David Roberts


That is wild. There's so much attention going to oil and gas
methane right now, EPA rules coming, there's international
treaties being signed, like on and on.


Peter Lehner


Yep. And there should be. We obviously need to address those
sources of methane. I think that what is often forgotten is we
also have to address these other sources of methane. So the other
reason it gets confusing is the other two ways agriculture
contributes to climate change are also very different than
burning fossil fuels. The second is that almost all of that
cropland uses a lot of fertilizer. By and large, in the U.S. and
around the world, people put on a lot more fertilizer than the
plants take up, and a lot of nitrogen is added to the ground that
is not absorbed by the plant.


So where does that nitrogen go? Some of it runs off into the
water, and then it causes eutrophication, algae outbreaks. It
causes the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. It seeps into
groundwater: You have heard of blue baby syndrome, which is too
much nitrate in the groundwater. But some of it also goes into
the air. And some of it goes into the air as NOx, which is sort
of a local smog causing pollution. And some of it goes into the
air as nitrous oxide. N2O nitrous oxide, which is about 300 times
more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas and also one
of the major drivers of ozone depletion, stratospheric ozone
depletion.


So this is a major source of climate change, nitrous oxide
pollution alone, virtually all of which comes from agriculture,
virtually all of which is this overfertilization and some coming
from these manure pits that we talked about before. That alone is
about 5% or six percent of U.S. greenhouse gases.


David Roberts


Oh, wow.


Peter Lehner


So again, it's not burning fossil fuels, but a major contribution
to climate change. And then the last way agriculture contributes
to climate change is what you alluded to earlier. When you
convert land, say, native grasslands or forest in Brazil or
forest in the U.S. to cropland, you take this carbon that is in
those healthy soils or in the grass or in the trees, and you
release it, and that goes into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide.
So you get two things: One is you get this slug of carbon dioxide
into the atmosphere when you convert land, this conversion of
land from grassland to forest.


But then the second part, which EPA is only beginning to really
pay attention to, is what you can think of as the lost
sequestration capacity. Healthy land, grassland, forest, land is
this very dynamic, wonderful system that is sequestering carbon
and storing carbon. And by contrast, cropland is really — the way
we treat it often is largely biologically dead. It has very
little carbon life in it. And that's why we have to put so many
fertilizers in it.


David Roberts


Is that just because of monocrops? Is that just an inevitable
result of monocrops?


Peter Lehner


I'm not sure it's absolutely inevitable. It's in large part
because of the way we grow in these sort of chemical dependent
monocultures, for sure. So you have both this slug of carbon when
you convert land. But, hey, look, a lot of our cropland in the
U.S. was converted 100 years ago. Every year, that is not
sequestering nearly as much as it could. So you were losing the
sequestration capacity. That 800 million acres of grazing land —
think about that, it's about 40% of the contiguous U.S. And it
has been overgrazed for decades. There are reports of John Wesley
Powell going out west and saying, "Whoa!"


He was sent out to look after exploring some more remote areas.
But everywhere he saw cattle, he said the land is getting
degraded. In 1934, Congress tried to address overgrazing and
erosion and soil degradation. And then 1976, they tried to do it
again, so far, really not to much avail, with the result that you
have hundreds of millions of acres that aren't sequestering the
carbon they could.


David Roberts


Yeah, this came up in our Biofuels discussion a few weeks ago,
too. A lot of new thinking about biofuels is taking that sort of
counterfactual sequestration into account.


Peter Lehner


Exactly. And you did a great podcast with my colleague Dan
Lashof, and we're working together on biofuels. That was a great
podcast you did there. So if you add all of this up, what you see
is that agriculture has this enormous contribution to climate
change, but it's so different than the way most people think
about climate change. And what happens also is EPA sort of thinks
about it differently. So, first of all, their classic greenhouse
gas inventory puts, say, on farm energy in a different category.
They don't put that in agriculture. They put that in energy, or
they put that in the manufacturer fertilizer, which itself is
enormously energy intensive and releases a lot of CO2.


That's in a different chapter. Land use conversion, that carbon
that I was telling you about, they put that in a different
chapter, and they don't even think about, in their greenhouse gas
inventory about the lost sequestration capacity, this opportunity
cost. So if you just look at the inventory, EPA says that
agriculture contributes about 11% of U.S. greenhouse gases. But
if you actually think of agriculture as a sector all, what really
goes into agriculture, and you include the land use impacts,
which, as I said, are usually left out, that's where you get that
agriculture is basically in a par with transportation and is
about a quarter drives about a quarter of climate change.


And then, if you include the rest of the food system, the
processing, et cetera.


David Roberts


Food waste.


Peter Lehner


And food waste, of course, rotting in landfills, you've got about
a third or more of climate change is driven by our food system.
And that's why unless we change our food system, we're not going
to address climate change adequately.


David Roberts


Wild, okay. I want to get to the Farm Bill, but one final
question, which is just my — and again, this is sort of my
impression from the outside over the year — is that the
agriculture industry has a level of power and influence in
political circles that I think most people don't appreciate. That
sort of makes the oil and gas sector look like patty cakes. It's
amazing. I will never forget that Oprah — I don't know if other
listeners are old enough to remember this — but Oprah said on her
show once, basically, "You know, beef's bad, it's not very
healthy and it destroys the environment."


And got taken to task by the agriculture industry and they
basically took her down and forced her to publicly apologize. And
if you can take Oprah down, you've got muscle.


Peter Lehner


Yeah. And it is certainly true. There's no question that the
conventional or industrial agriculture lobby is very powerful in
Congress. I would point out that there's a lot of great farmers
who are trying to do things right and are working to produce
food, healthy food, in a sustainable way. And we work with groups
like the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, which is
itself a coalition of a lot of these groups, I wish they had the
political power that conventional AG does because they do great
stuff and they are really examples of what we want to be doing,
how we can produce food in a way that doesn't pollute our air and
water and that rebuilds soil health.


But unfortunately, the political power is with the agrochemical
industries, which are very dominant. They say the meat processing
companies, four companies control 85% of the beef market. These
are enormously politically powerful.


David Roberts


So the Farm Bill then, before we get into the details of what the
Farm Bill might do or what you want it to do, let's just talk
about the Farm Bill as such. This is something that they pass
every year or a set number of years because it just like comes up
periodically. Is this something they have to do every session?


Peter Lehner


No. So, the Farm Bill is so important, and for a long time,
really, when it comes up, it's really only the farm community
that pays attention to it. And I think what I hope you've heard
is that everybody should pay attention to it. And that's why the
Farm Bill is far more important than people realize. For all of
us who eat, for all of us who breathe, for all of us who drink,
the Farm Bill has an enormous impact. So what is the Farm Bill?
The Farm Bill was first passed actually in the Depression in
1933. There was the Depression and hunger.


There was the Dust Bowl, there was the crisis on farms. And so
Congress stepped in. And I can give you a long history and I
won't. But basically Congress did two things. One, they tried to
address the hunger and they also tried to restrict supply, pay
farmers not to produce, to keep prices high. And sometimes also
buy some surplus to give that to the hungry also, but as a way of
keeping the surplus off the market and keeping prices high.


David Roberts


That's why the Farm Bill has this weird structure where it has
food subsidies for the poor in it, which I think, on the surface,
seems like just an odd artifact.


Peter Lehner


Yeah. And it's also essentially a political marriage. So, the
Farm Bill, on one hand, provides nutrition assistance, now called
SNAP, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance, formerly Food SNAP, that
helps feed about 45 million Americans every year, and that right
now provides about $75-80 billion a year. It also then provides
about $20 billion a year in farm subsidies. And ever since it was
passed in 1933, it was amended a few times. But basically, it has
to get reenacted, reauthorized every five years. And if it
doesn't, these programs on which so many people depend basically
stop. They won't continue without being reauthorized.


So the last Farm Bill that was fully enacted was in 2018, and so
it expired September 30, 2023. There was still a little extra
money hanging around, so we had a couple of months. But then what
Congress just did a couple of weeks ago in the continuing
resolution that funded the government up to January 19, they also
agreed to extend the Farm Bill until September 30, 2024.


David Roberts


Such a rational —


Peter Lehner


Yeah, exactly. We're covered right now. But it ends up being
enormously important because it provides this nutrition
assistance for, as I said, 45 million Americans. Really
important. And it also has a series of different programs that
provide enormous subsidies to farmers. And those subsidies, when
you put them together, have an enormous impact on what is grown,
where it's grown, how it's grown, and all of that for the reasons
I was just explaining about how agriculture affects our
environment, and climate change has an enormous impact on the
environment. And that's why the Farm Bill is actually the most
important environmental law Congress is going to address in the
next couple of years.


And unlike our other environmental laws that haven't been amended
for decades, this one is amended every five years.


David Roberts


I'm so interested in the SNAP thing. I mean, it's a big safety
net program, correct? That's been around since 1933, I am
assuming, in fact, I know to be the case that conservatives hate
social safety programs generally, and I bet they hate SNAP. So
what is the magic sauce that has allowed this extremely large
subsidy for poor people to survive what I can only assume are
repeated conservative attempts to weaken or get rid of it? Is
there some reason it has stayed in? How has it survived, I guess,
is what I'm asking.


Peter Lehner


Look, I'm not the super political expert here, but what people
have said who know this and have worked with this is, you
essentially have a marriage. You have the Democrats that support
the Nutrition Assistance Program, and by and large, Republicans
support the farmer subsidies and neither has enough support to
get either of those through separately. And in some ways there's
something good there, which is that the Farm Bill has always been
pretty bipartisan. And for example, right now Senator Stabenow,
who is the Democratic Chair of the Senate AG Committee, and
Senator Boozman who's the Republican ranking member of the Senate
AG Committee, are really trying to work together because history
is that this Farm Bill doesn't get passed unless it's bipartisan.


David Roberts


Definitionally it will have to be this time, right?


Peter Lehner


Exactly.


David Roberts


It's going to have to go through a Republican House and a
Democratic Senate. I mean, is it viewed is it widely accepted as
sort of must pass, like they are going to figure something out or
is there any chance at all that it could just lapse?


Peter Lehner


I don't think there's really any chance it would just lapse
because that would largely end these programs on which so many
Americans, both the Americans who need it for food — and by the
way, it's often thought of as though those are urban Americans
and rural Americans are the farmers. That's not the case. There
are people all around the country and in many places rural
communities at even higher rates that depend on SNAP assistance,
on food assistance. So this is really important to everybody. And
of course producing food is important. So the farm safety net is
important.


What could happen is, I suppose, even though I think both the
House and the Senate agriculture leaders are saying they're going
to work very hard to get a new Farm Bill out in the spring of
2024, if that doesn't happen, potentially they could just extend
it for another year the way they just did.


David Roberts


That does seem like the way we do things.


Peter Lehner


Right. It's not ideal, but I don't think, and people who know
this area better than I do, I don't think the chances of the law
just ending completely is really in the cards.


David Roberts


So they're going to figure something out, so they're going to
pass something. So this is a chance to get some good things
through.


Peter Lehner


Right. And there's some good things in. And I should say one of
the important elements here is the Inflation Reduction Act. And
you've probably talked about that a lot and mostly focused on the
many billions of dollars that went to clean energy programs. But
the Inflation Reduction Act also put $20 billion into essentially
Farm Bill programs, preexisting Farm Bill programs, which pay
farmers to implement conservation measures. And those have always
been oversubscribed, which means more farmers apply for this
assistance than can get it. So the Inflation Reduction Act put an
extra close to $20 billion over four years into these
conservation programs, but with a twist, which we think is
terrific.


Most of these conservation programs are for a wide range of
resource concerns: water quality, air quality, habitat, and
others. In the Inflation Reduction Act these have to be
conservation practices focused on reducing net greenhouse gases.


David Roberts


Interesting.


Peter Lehner


So this was the first time — in the Inflation Reduction Act —
that Congress really, in any way, really linked agriculture and
climate change and said, "Here's $20 extra billion, but you got
to spend it on climate change."


David Roberts


Right. So AG did not get completely overlooked then, in this last
session, in this last round, because yeah, I hadn't really paid
attention to that. I had kind of thought it was like the
redheaded stepchild that got passed over. So there is $20 billion
is not pocket change either.


Peter Lehner


No, it's a lot of money. As I said, right now, the core Farm Bill
gives farmers about $20 billion in subsidies every year. But most
of those subsidies are not for conservation programs. A lot of
that is for what are called either commodity support, where
essentially a farmer gets paid, based on what he grew in the
past, if the market price or his revenue goes below a certain
price. So it's essentially a price guarantee called the reference
price.


David Roberts


It's an extremely Soviet sector of our economy.


Peter Lehner


Yeah. And it's largely almost three-quarters of that goes to corn
and soybean, which of course, is largely used either for animal
feed or for ethanol. And then we also have crop insurance, which,
again, that makes a lot of sense. We all want to eat. We need
food security, there should be crop insurance. In this case, the
premiums are very heavily subsidized by the taxpayer. Over 60%
subsidized. And again, over about three-quarters of crop
insurance went to corn, soy, wheat and cotton, those four big
crops. And what happens, the environmental impact of that is it
encourages farmers to essentially plant in riskier areas, which
tend to be the more ecologically sensitive areas, because if it
works out, they get all the benefit, and if it doesn't work out,
the taxpayer funded crop insurance pays them off.


David Roberts


Little moral hazard there.


Peter Lehner


Right, exactly. And then the last bit is these conservation
programs, which got this big boost in the Inflation Reduction
Act.


David Roberts


Is there any reason to think that that 20 billion is threatened
in some way, or is that pretty secure? Is that part of the Farm
Bill fight those subsidies?


Peter Lehner


You nailed it. Absolutely. Much of what we've been hearing are
ideas of how to essentially — we think of it as a raid on that
money, that $20 billion. And some would say, well, let's put it
to a broader range of conservation issues like irrigation or
something, and others would say keep it within agriculture, but
instead let's use it to sort of lift, say, the price guarantee
that peanut farmers get. And we have been pushing very hard to
try to keep this money and keep it climate focused. And
fortunately, Senator Stabenow, who, as I said, is the chair of
the Senate AG Committee, has been very, very firm.


She has repeatedly said that it's not going to happen that we're
going to lose this. Because this is really an extraordinary
investment. It's big boost in conservation funding and the fact
that it is climate focused is really important because this is
where there has not been enough attention over the past and where
there's really great opportunities. I think it's important just
to pause for a moment and just remind there's a lot of things
farmers can do, and some farmers are already doing, that can make
a big difference in how much nitrous oxide you release, how much
methane you release, how much carbon is stored in your soil. And
the trouble is most of those practices are only used on about 2%
or 3% of American farmland.


So we know what we want to do and this is a way to really
accelerate the adoption of those practices.


David Roberts


So would you say that's the biggest priority here, the biggest
fight, the biggest priority for the Farm Bill is preserving that
money for its intended purpose?


Peter Lehner


Yes, with a slight caveat. One is we definitely want to save the
Inflation Reduction Act money, but the Farm Bill money is
separate. The Inflation Reduction Act directed additional money
into Farm Bill programs. But the Farm Bill itself provides money.
And so we're going to want to be sure that we continue what's
called the baseline amount of funding for the conservation
programs in the Farm Bill and ideally make sure that those are
better targeted, also more closely targeted to climate issues.
And actually the federal government itself, the U.S. Department
of Agriculture's Natural Resource Conservation Service has
studied these practices that they're funding and they themselves
have found that some of them are actually counterproductive.


Needless to say, we'd like to say let's not have the taxpayer
subsidize practices that the government itself recognizes are
counterproductive. Let's focus on the best practices, the ones
that have the best climate and environmental impact. And since
there's a lot of farmer interest in these, let's really put our
money where it can make the biggest difference.


David Roberts


Yeah. So fights over the money and you mentioned also in your
blogs on this subject, speaking of research, that AG research in
general is undercooked, underfunded. Is there a chance to get
more of that in the Farm Bill?


Peter Lehner


We are certainly hoping. And again, there's two or three elements
of that under President Obama, he started these climate hubs
which were really areas to focus on climate aspects of
agriculture. There's been a lot of research but most of it has
been on productivity and what you can think of as just classic
conventional agriculture chemicals. So one is to get more
research. Unfortunately, publicly funded research has dropped in
the U.S. And when that gets its place taken by private funded
research; it's not on things like climate change, it's on things
like seeds that you can sell.


And then the other is that that research — so, we need more, we
need it to be better focused on sustainable practices rather than
on unsustainable practices. And we need it to be essentially
guaranteed because research is a long-term process. If you just
do it for a couple of years, you may not, especially in
agriculture, things take time. And so, we need a long-term
commitment to these climate hubs and to research and sustainable
agriculture. There was a study done by, I think it was UC Davis —
I'm not sure — that every dollar in agricultural research has
over $20 in payback.


It's one of the most cost-effective ways we can spend research
dollars. So that's a real opportunity for us.


David Roberts


And you also mentioned the crop insurance program, which I think
most — even if you just explain that to a person on the street,
the opportunities for that to encourage bad behavior seem quite
obvious from the structure of the thing. Are substantial reforms
to that on the table at all, or is that a subject of discussion?


Peter Lehner


I think it's a subject of some discussion and a lot of people in
different ways want to make sure we get the best benefit. They
recognize we do want crop insurance because it's important to
recognize crops are sort of different. Most insurance is sort of
trying to pool risk. So if my house burns down, I get covered.
But if my house burns down, it probably doesn't mean your house
is burning down. But with crops, if I have a bad crop, chances
are my neighbor does too. That's why I think some amount of
government involvement in crop insurance makes sense.


You really have to sort of spread the risk around. And of course,
food security is really important for our country. So we want to
keep crop insurance, but we also want to do it to incentivize
behavior that minimizes risk. And in particular, as climate
change is affecting farmers more and more with droughts and
floods and changing weather patterns and increased pests, we'd
like to ensure that our crop insurance system is encouraging
farmers to use practices that minimize risk. Unfortunately, right
now a lot of the practices that farmers use actually enhance
risk. They make them more vulnerable to floods and droughts.


And the good news here is that many of the same practices that
the Inflation Reduction Act will be funding that will help
mitigate or curb climate change will also help farmers adapt or
prepare for climate change or better respond and manage climate
change. The same ones that mitigate can help build resilience.
And that's a real opportunity.


David Roberts


And what about the Rural Energy for America program, REAP as it's
called? This came up when I raised the subject on Twitter. This
came up a couple of times. Is that on your radar?


Peter Lehner


It is not as much. So, I'm not an expert. But there again, there
was money in the Inflation Reduction Act to help convert some of
the rural energies, which I remember from my time working on
energy are some of the dirtiest parts of the power sector and
there's great opportunity in rural communities. One thing they
have is a lot of land. And so it's a great opportunity to shift
from, say, an old dirty coal plant to solar and wind. And I think
that's what the Inflation Reduction Act funding will help
accelerate.


David Roberts


And the final thing you mentioned in your blogs was transparency.
This is another thing where on the energy side I've been
following, there's a lot of talk about this, a lot of talk about
like California just passed a law that forces large industrial
users to report their scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions. So there's a
lot of work on transparency on the energy side, I'm guessing
giant AG corporations are not super transparent. What can be done
on that front?


Peter Lehner


Well, we need to keep pushing that. That is a real problem. And I
think it's a problem both in the specifics that there's very
little transparency and it's not over agriculture's contribution
to climate change, but agriculture's conventional air pollution.
I mentioned earlier that say these concentrated animal feeding
operations are the country's largest sources of hydrogen sulfide
and ammonia, which are poisonous gases. And EPA for a long time
exempted them from reporting under the federal statutes. And we
actually sued EPA and said that exemption was illegal and the
court agreed with us. And then the industry was powerful enough
during the Trump administration to get Congress to amend the
environmental laws —


David Roberts


Holy crap.


Peter Lehner


to exempt them from — and again, this is just reporting their
poisonous emissions.


David Roberts


Is there any plausible cover story for that or is that just a
pure power play like we don't want to?


Peter Lehner


It's hard not to see it as a power play because of course,
reporting is, I think, by industry seen as the first step to
potential oversight or regulation.


David Roberts


Heaven forbid.


Peter Lehner


We were talking earlier how nobody really understands how much
agriculture contributes to climate change. And of course, if they
don't understand that, there's going to be no pressure
politically to address that contribution. And unfortunately,
right now, agriculture doesn't have to report their greenhouse
gas emissions. There's been a rider in Congress for almost a
decade prohibiting EPA from making industrial agriculture report
its greenhouse gas emissions. And there's already proposals in
Congress that if the SEC rule requiring reporting ever comes out
to try to exempt agriculture from that, there has been pushback
in almost every way of having agriculture to report their
emissions.


And the sad reality is these emissions are real. They're either
causing climate change or they're causing local air pollution or
both. And not reporting them doesn't mean they don't cause
climate change. It just means we're not going to address them as
effectively. So it's really important that people begin to
understand that this is a sector that has tremendous impact and
we've got to be much more open about it so that we can address it
in a way that makes sense. And look, we all eat: We need to have
a food sector. Nobody is saying that we should get rid of the
food sector in any way.


Agriculture is super important, not only to the country overall,
but to every state. But we also know enough today to be able to
produce healthier food in a much more sustainable way.


David Roberts


Yeah, you've laid out some specific stuff that sort of climate
aware people are pursuing here. Preserving the IRA money for
conservation programs, beefing up those conservation programs,
aiming those conservation programs more at climate change,
beefing up research, reforming the federal crop insurance
program, increasing transparency. Give me a sort of realpolitik
assessment. How should we think about the chances of these good
things happening? Unlike on the energy side, where nothing
passing at all was always an extremely real and looming
possibility here, something's got to pass. Right? So what do you
think are the chances of this good stuff getting in there?


Like what's? Sort of the balance of political forces? And I'm
thinking specifically about the House, the Republican House,
which is, as you might have heard, insane and incompetent.


Peter Lehner


So I think breaking it into two pieces: Senator Stabenow is so
strong on protecting the climate focused conservation funding of
the Inflation Reduction Act that I would like to feel that we can
think that that will remain. And that's really important. And
that, of course, is going to be helping. I think it's important
to remember this is money that then goes to hundreds of thousands
of farmers who want to spend the money in good ways.


David Roberts


This is not against farmers. None of this is against farmers.


Peter Lehner


Not at all. More farmers have applied for these programs than
could get it. Two out of three farmers in the past have been
turned away because we didn't have enough money. So this is money
that is going right to farmers doing exactly what they want and
what we as a country want. So that's really great. I think 2018
may be a bit of a lesson for us. In 2018, the House of
Representatives passed a Farm Bill with one party. The
Republicans passed a very extreme Farm Bill, unlike any before.
It had always been bipartisan in both houses.


And then the Senate sort of ignored that and passed a bipartisan
bill that was really much, much better. And then the House came
around and adopted the Senate bill. So I hope something like that
may happen again. I think the Senate is going to be working hard
to come up with a bipartisan bill that will make some climate
improvements along the way. There's also, I should say, a long
history of discrimination and of unequal access to Farm Bill
programs for farmers of color. And this administration is doing a
lot to try to address that, to really make sure the money is
getting to farmers that have been underserved in the past.


And I think we will see some improvements on that score in the
Senate Farm Bill. And my guess is that although there may be some
noise at the House beforehand, one can be hopeful that at the end
of the day, the House will go in the direction of a more
reasonable bill from the Senate.


David Roberts


Yeah, it seems like clowning around and embarrassing themselves
for a while and then just sheepishly doing what they should have
done all along seems to be the pattern they've set so far. So
maybe that'll happen again.


Peter Lehner


Yeah, that happened in 2018.


David Roberts


Yes, I know. It's like the House Republican special. I hate to be
in a position where I'm depending on the U.S. Senate for anything
good in life, but here we are. So a lot of this seems like I
don't want to say small ball, but let's say there's nothing
fundamental here on the table in the Farm Bill. We're nibbling
around the edges, beefing up existing programs, tweaking existing
programs. So I want you to imagine — free yourself from the
fetters of politics for a while — imagine some bright future day
when Democrats have another trifecta and they have, for whatever
reason, power to do big things, another big swing at climate,
because there are a lot, I think everybody sort of acknowledges,
IRA was a big deal, but there are definitely pieces of the puzzle
that IRA did not get to.


And so say there's Democratic majorities and Democratic will to
do big things on climate in the next Farm Bill. Think big for me
here, just for a few minutes. What kind of things would you like
to see that would be more transformative?


Peter Lehner


Well, I would focus on two. One, I mentioned earlier we would
have a crop insurance program that really benefits crop risk
reducing behavior, which also is climate change mitigating
behavior. And so instead of just having the conservation programs
encouraging behavior or practices on farms that we want to
encourage, you have the much bigger and much more important crop
insurance program doing that.


David Roberts


And that's stuff like just rotating crops and —


Peter Lehner


Rotating crops, cover crops, adding trees to pasture land and to
crops. Having a diversity. Part of the way you can be more
resilient is having a diversity of crops if you have nothing but
one crop, if there's any problem there, you're in big trouble.
And diversity is both biologically much more stable, but it's
also economically a lot more stable.


David Roberts


And we should note and this is, I guess, implied and obvious, but
I'm just going to say it explicitly anyway if farmers were not
completely insured against the risks of giant monocropping, they
would naturally be moving towards more variety just to protect
themselves, right? It's only because they are protected entirely
by this crop insurance program that they're not buffering
themselves more against risk in this way.


Peter Lehner


That's certainly what you're seeing, that the farmers that are
using more sustainable approaches tend to be growing a much wider
range of crops and products. So they have that economic as well
as biological diversity. But the other big thing that would be
great to change right now, the Farm Bill directly and indirectly,
very heavily supports animal agriculture. And for the reasons
that I mentioned, that is where most of the climate change
contribution from agriculture comes from. It's the animal manure,
it's the cows belching, it is the production of animal feed. And
it's animal feed is very inefficient.


It takes about 15 pounds of grain to get a pound of beef. And
corn is the most heavily fertilized with nitrogen fertilizer
crop. And all of that nitrogen fertilizer, as I mentioned, not
all of it, but a lot of it is running off as nitrous oxide. So
all of this animal agriculture, which also uses up that 800
million acres of grazing land and therefore losing carbon, has
this huge climate impact. It also, frankly, is unhealthy. It also
isn't great for biodiversity.


David Roberts


Yeah, I mean, beef is bad. People hate to hear this and no one
wants to say it publicly, but beef is bad down the line. Pick
your lens: health, you know, ecology, economics, concentration of
wealth. I mean, name it.


Peter Lehner


WRI has some great charts. They're a great organization that
compares the climate, water and land use footprint of different
foods. And you will see that beef is just far more than any other
food that we have. So right now, the Farm Bill really heavily
supports that and provides almost no support to plant-based
alternatives to a healthier diet. And if you think of what we've
done in the energy system, we tried to clean up coal plants, we
tried to switch to inherently clean energy like solar and wind,
and we tried to reduce demand by energy efficiency.


Right now, most of what we talk about in agriculture is just that
first one, just trying to clean up existing production. We have
to think about both shifting to inherently cleaner way of getting
food and that is, for example, a plant-based diet or plant-based
alternatives. And it doesn't have to be going vegan. This is just
Americans eat many times more meat than any other culture. We
could still have plenty of meat and eat much less than we are
now, with much less of an impact. And the Farm Bill can make a
big difference there.


People love to think that this is all cultural, but it's also
economic. Right now, meat is cheap because taxpayers pay for a
lot of the bill. And that can be balanced in a Farm Bill where
taxpayer subsidies, the subsidies in the farm Bill are supporting
a healthier, more climate friendly food system rather than a food
system that is so focused on these products that have a very big
climate impact.


David Roberts


Yeah, I hate that cultural argument. I just have to say you see
that in transportation too. You have decades of public policy
supporting automobile infrastructure such that average people
just living normal lives have to drive all the time. And then you
get a bunch of people saying, "oh, it's just cultural, Americans
just like their cars." That's not really it. And I think it's
really the same with beef. This whole idea that Americans just
have some sort of inherent love of big steaks, big meat, it's so
ridiculous. I always find that absurd, although that is a real
third rail.


Peter Lehner


Yeah, that's where economics makes a difference. And right now,
as I said, we're subsidizing foods that tend to have a larger
environmental impact and frankly, are less healthy, and we could
and should be subsidizing food that is healthier. For example,
good old fruits and vegetables get comparatively much, much less
support in the Farm Bill.


David Roberts


Yeah, that's crazy. When do you think, and this will really be
the final question, but when I think about all the kind of
cultural hot button issues that are involved in climate change
and decarbonization, I mean, there are millions. Like, we just
went through this gas stove nonsense last year. But no hot button
issue is hotter of a button for some reason than diets and meat.
Meat in diets is just like — we're talking about Oprah — just
like you can't go there. So when do you think we'll reach a point
where a mainstream politician will actually broach the subject,
"hey, we should encourage Americans to eat less meat" and just
say it outright?


Is that ever going to happen?


Peter Lehner


Well, Cory Booker is already saying that to some extent, and he's
very aware of this impact. Part of the reason it gets so derailed
is people tend to view it as an all or nothing. And we make food
choices three times a day. There are a lot of chances to just
slightly shift to a diet with more fruits and vegetables. And it
doesn't have to mean you're going 100% vegan and just in the same
way that we can shift our transportation system — and maybe you
drive a little less and you take mass transit a little more — it
doesn't mean you will never, ever get into a car again.


So I think the conversation about diets has been, unfortunately,
torqued, and actually it makes even less sense. You will only buy
a car maybe once every ten years, but, as I said, you make
dietary choices three times a day, and you also have the health
benefits of eating more fruits and vegetables. So it's a great
opportunity. But again, I think it's important in terms of what
policy can do is partly it's what foods say, for example, the
federal government itself buys. But it's also in the farm Bill,
which is so important to every environmental matter that we care
about.


It can also be supporting healthier foods and more so than it
does today. That way you'd have a farm Bill that is encouraging
farmers to grow different foods in places with less environmental
impact in a way that is more sustainable. And that's, again, it's
why this Farm Bill, most people don't think about, has this
environmental impact far in excess of virtually anything else
that Congress will be addressing.


David Roberts


Awesome. Well, Peter, thanks so much for coming on. I've been
meaning to do this for ages, and it sounds like this was the
right time to do it. So thank you so much for clarifying this
whole subject matter for me more. As you could tell, I wandered
into it more or less ignorant. So this has been absolutely
fascinating. Thank you for taking the time.


Peter Lehner


Thank you for your interest. It's great to spread the word on
this; it's so important.


David Roberts


Thank you for listening to the Volts podcast. It is ad-free,
powered entirely by listeners like you. If you value
conversations like this, please consider becoming a paid Volts
subscriber at volts.wtf. Yes, that's volts.wtf. So that I can
continue doing this work. Thank you so much, and I'll see you
next time.


This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other
subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit
www.volts.wtf/subscribe