The Food and Agriculture Climate Alliance (FACA), now more than 70 members strong, has worked over the past three months to develop specific recommendations for how the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) should approach a potential carbon bank. FACA began sharing those recommendations with USDA and Congress today.
A voluntary, USDA-led carbon bank is one policy mechanism being considered to help reduce barriers that producers and landowners face to participating in voluntary carbon markets and adopting climate-smart practices.
FACA recommends that USDA lay the foundation for a potential carbon bank by first developing a series of pilot projects that would focus on the following four areas:
Scaling climate solutions: Pilot projects should help increase adoption of climate-smart practices that reduce, directly capture or sequester greenhouse gas emissions, and/or increase climate resilience. Pilots should deploy “critical climate infrastructure” to increase the capacity of farmers, ranchers and forest owners to adapt to climate change, while ensuring food and economic security.