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A senior USDA official said 2024 will be a pivotal year for the Climate Change Smart Commodity Partnership Program as the Biden administration’s efforts to develop markets for low-carbon agricultural products begin in earnest.
“The number of registrants is increasing. [and] “Registration is going to be important this year,” Robert Bonney, USDA’s assistant secretary for farm production and conservation, said on Agripulse Newsmakers this week, adding.
In late 2022, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced that USDA would invest up to $2.8 billion in 70 projects, and expanded the program with an additional $325 million in 71 projects.
Bonney said data reporting is a major concern among producers and a focus for the Department of Agriculture as each project gets up and running.
“How do we ensure that [we’re getting] Are we maintaining the right data and strong incentives for producers to sign up?” Bonnie asks.
Laura Wood Peterson, founder of Laura Wood Peterson Consulting, said some projects are more advanced than others, but it will be several years before all the data is collected and analyzed. He said it would take a while.
“I think there are several projects that present a clear and strong path to MMRV.” [measuring, monitoring, reporting and verification efforts] In terms of all kinds of additional ecosystem service value creation. … There’s a lot of exciting work going on between the private sector and the traditional conservation work that’s been done with farmers,” Peterson said.
Boney said producers also want to know how these programs add value to their operations, and the USDA is working to track that through the supply chain.
“Some new technologies and new companies are collecting data in different ways. …One of the things we’re thinking about, and a lot of projects are thinking about, is around this issue. [of] standard. Do we need to standardize…I think we need to talk there about methodologies for measuring things like soil carbon and methane. ”
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