Research & Outcomes

Each one of the enrolled farms supports the Virginia Tech research agenda:

• Measure the impact of climate-smart practices on greenhouse gas emissions and carbon sequestration;
  • If scaled nationally, the pilot’s estimated impact could reduce the agriculture sector’s emissions by 55% and total U.S. emissions by 8% after ten years.
• Quantify the economic and environmental benefits from adopting climate-smart practices;
• Estimate impacts on productivity following adoption of climate-smart practices;
• Evaluate consumer willingness to pay for various climate-smart labels; and
• Design incentives to support high-cost high-impact GHG mitigating opportunities in the livestock sector*

*The Livestock Working Group will be established in Minnesota and Virginia to implement high-value and high-cost climate-smart practices in Animal Feeding Operations (AFOs). The sub-pilot will implement a separate program for practices specific to swine, dairy, poultry, and beef operations, including basic lagoon covers, collectors and converters, separators, and composting systems.

In partnership with Sustainable Food Lab, the Alliance will develop and launch a climate-smart certificate program open to all enrolled producers, to be launched early in project year 3.

Currently, the private sector lacks a climate-smart certificate that addresses supply chain barriers, works at scale, and leverages public and private investments to avoid penalizing early actors while demonstrating additional climate benefits. The current criteria for demonstrating additional greenhouse gas benefits often prevents early adopter participation. The Alliance pilot will test a program model to verify and measure total and net greenhouse gas benefits; this model will enable the private sector to
purchase climate-smart commodity certificates and claim additional investments using average net greenhouse gas reductions. Early adopters would be fairly compensated by the program, both gross and net impacts would be reported, and private sector actors would claim only the net impacts to meet their reporting needs. This model will also address supply chain barriers by disconnecting the certificate from the need for chain of custody tracking.

High-end estimates of private-sector market carbon farming are only $5 billion, while the cost of national adoption of climate smart practices is approximately $50 billion.  Additionally, the pilot will conduct research on consumer willingness to pay for climate-smart commodities to help assess the size of the private market and effectiveness of climate-smart labels.

The Alliance will ensure meaningful participation by underserved producers through a variety of mechanisms. These are tightly linked to the pilot’s longer-term goals around equity, as well as being in line with reaching the USDA’s Justice40 Initiative.

In line with the Justice40 Initiative, 40% of producers enrolled in the pilot qualify as historically underserved, including producers who are socially disadvantaged, veterans, limited-resource, women, small and/or growing specialty crops.

*As defined by USDA

Furthermore, the pilot will:

• Allocate 5% of funds for socially disadvantaged producers and 5% for limited-resource producers in each partner state.
• Assess outreach plans and conservation district proposals in each pilot state to ensure that historically underserved producers live within the chosen districts, are aware of the project and are encouraged to apply. Equity producer groups will also be engaged nationally and at the state level to evaluate conservation district proposals and outreach plans.
• Guarantee that limited-resource producers, socially disadvantaged producers and producers from female-only operations automatically qualify for an “equity payment” valued at 25% of the baseline $100 per unit, or a total of $125 per unit and provide a minimum payment of $500 to operations with fewer than 5 acres.
• Equip producer groups, including equity-oriented groups, to host stakeholder roundtables in pilot states, soliciting producer feedback on program design and pilot participation.

The Alliance will also form a DEI Committee, including relevant Tribal representatives, the National Black Growers Council, and invited members of at least one young farmer organization, an indigenous representative from a national livestock association, a female small dairy operator, a young, small-scale, LGBTQ producer, a national corn association leader, among others, to represent underserved producers.