The House Agriculture Committee held a hearing on voluntary carbon markets yesterday—here’s what we said about how biotech infrastructure can ensure their success.
“To meet the challenge of climate change, it is crucial to lead with science and U.S. innovation,” BIO said in testimony submitted to the House Agriculture Committee. This requires incentivizing “the adoption of innovative, sustainable technologies and practices.”
Voluntary carbon markets can enable agriculture to be part of the solution—they “will create market pull incentives” for investment and use of technologies like carbon sequestration, precision plant breeding, and enhanced animal feed that can reduce emissions in livestock, to name a few.
“To ensure voluntary carbon markets can be successful, the government should establish the infrastructure to measure and verify those carbon sequestrations at the local farm level,” BIO continued. “Furthermore, farmers need assistance in understanding and accessing the current voluntary and compliance markets for these credits.”
This is why we need the Growing Climate Solutions Act (GCSA), which would create a certification program at USDA and provide farmers with technical resources to participate in markets. The bill passed the Senate in June; now, it’s up to the House.
“What’s the downside?” asked Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE), who cosponsored GCSA in the House with Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-VA).
“The downside in this space is that we don’t act”—that we’re not providing the standards, measurement, and technical assistance farmers need, said Callie Eideberg, Director of Government Relations for the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF).
“There are currently a variety of different options that farmers have to generate carbon credits,” added Leo Bastos, SVP and Head of Global Commercial Ecosystems at BIO member Bayer. “It’s really important that they understand that the credits and the programs that they use are going to generate high-value, real carbon credits that…have value in the market and help solve the climate crisis.” (Watch the exchange starting at 2:43:00.)
BIO and EDF are part of the Food and Agriculture Climate Alliance (FACA), a coalition of nearly 80 organizations that have called for passage of the Growing Climate Solutions Act. In addition to FACA, BIO and several of its member companies including Aequor, Bayer, Benson Hill, Inc., Boehringer Ingleheim Animal Health, Cargill, and Corteva are part of the 175+ agricultural and environmental organizations who endorsed this legislation when it was introduced earlier this year.
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