Similarly, Nicole Lederer, co-founder and chair of US advocacy group Environmental Entrepreneurs (E2), wants the country’s Department of Agriculture to incentivize farmers to take up regenerative agriculture by ensuring the price of crop insurance reflects the lower risk of crop failure in farms adopting it.
According to Lederer, studies suggest that corn, soybean, and almond farmers using these techniques have seen their incomes increase from higher yields and savings on inputs. But the biggest potential comes from sequestering carbon into the soil – carbon that farmers can be paid for by third parties seeking to offset their own emissions.
While debate continues as to whether this potential windfall is realistic or an overestimate, a recent E2 report states that US growers could sequester the equivalent of the annual emissions of 64 coal-fired power plants into the soil if they adopt regenerative farming methods.
Regenerative ag is also a key political tool to get large swathes of the US involved in solving climate change, Lederer adds. She points out that the 2018 Farm Bill, which included incentives to sequester carbon, was passed by Congress with bipartisan support – making it something of a rarity in recent US political history.