4. Data Collection and Analysis

Accurate and timely data are critical to the success of USDA’s programs and to the understanding, expansion, and promotion of carbon farming. Such data allow the department, policymakers, and the public to monitor programs, ensure that USDA is using its resources effectively, and analyze trends in agriculture.

In addition to improving its ability to collect and analyze survey and other research data, USDA also needs to collect—and make available—more data through its commodity, conservation, and crop insurance programs. The department provides billions of dollars to producers across the country each year through these programs, yet there is little data available that would allow policymakers and the public to meaningfully evaluate their impact. USDA should make a number of changes, including releasing timely data on conservation compliance spot checks, and collecting additional data on Federal Crop Insurance Program and conservation program participants, in order to ensure that these programs are effective and are aligned with national climate goals. Congress should also repeal §1619 of the 2008 Farm Bill, which prevents government agencies and the public from accessing critical information about businesses receiving federal funding through the department.⁶⁵ This guarantee of secrecy, which no other industry enjoys, will continue to hobble efforts to evaluate and improve federal farm programs until it is reversed.⁶⁶

National Agricultural Statistics Service.

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in the United States, and provides a wealth of information about operator characteristics, finances, and practices.⁶⁷ It also conducts the Agricultural Resource Management Survey (ARMS), which provides an annual source of data on farm and ranch practices, resource use, and finances, and collects data on a number of other important issues, such as on-farm chemical use, expected yields, and farm labor.⁶⁸ These data sets have the potential to improve our understanding of how the agricultural sector is mitigating and adapting to climate change through the adoption of different practices and technologies and are critical for benchmarking progress towards conservation, climate, and environmental justice goals.

The COA and ARMS already include some questions about climate-friendly agricultural practices, yet these questions fail to meet the needs of farmers, policymakers, and researchers who need data about this quickly growing sector of the agricultural economy. This dearth of information makes it more challenging for policymakers and nonprofits to distribute much-needed resources, for researchers to investigate new developments and opportunities, and for farmers and industry groups to expand their markets or develop new ones. NASS should ensure that the agricultural census and ARMS provide a comprehensive data set on climate-friendly practices and the operations utilizing them. In addition, NASS should establish an advisory committee of researchers and practitioners who study or utilize climate-friendly practices in order to identify additional ways to better serve the sector. Congress should also allocate sufficient funding for a new Census of Carbon Farming to collect detailed data on the prevalence and use of climate-friendly practices such as alley cropping and range planting, as well as demographic, financial, and geographic data on the operations utilizing them.

Economic Research Service. ERS received less than $85 million in funding in FY 2020,⁶⁹ a substantial reduction from previous levels of funding. In 1977, for example, ERS received in excess of $200 million after adjusting for inflation.⁷⁰ Its budget has slowly declined since the beginning of the Reagan

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Administration, reducing the agency’s capacity to produce original analysis in areas of critical concern, particularly those relating to poverty, pollution, and climate change. Indeed, the Trump Administration’s decisions to move ERS staff from Washington, D.C., to Kansas City and to lower the agency’s budget were reportedly designed to limit the agency’s ability to analyze issues such as these.⁷¹

In FY 2017, ERS researchers devoted only 2% of their time to issues relating to climate adaptation and mitigation.⁷² This share has likely decreased since then as the Trump Administration undercut ERS and climate-related research at USDA. The current administration should not only reverse the Trump Administration’s restriction of climate-related research, but should also greatly increase the resources devoted to climate mitigation and resilience. Agricultural businesses lose billions of dollars of crops and livestock each year due to climate-related damages, and that amount will only increase as the climate crisis intensifies.⁷³ There is an urgent need for the industry to rapidly adopt climate-friendly practices to be able to withstand these growing challenges. ERS should quickly expand the number of researchers in its climate change program area, while ensuring that other program areas have researchers devoted to characterizing the specific impacts of climate change on their specialties.

Notably, ERS has historically lacked funding and support to expand its research beyond economics. Following the establishment of ERS in 1961, overtly white supremacist legislators blocked ERS efforts to study rural poverty and marginalized populations, particularly Black farmers, for decades.⁷⁴

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While ERS was able to conduct important research in these areas at times, the congressional appropriations process constrained its ability to research issues outside of narrowly defined economic topics despite the agency’s mission to provide social science analysis on a wide range of concerns. Decades of stagnant budgets have exacerbated this problem, leaving the agency with little flexibility to hire social scientist professionals outside of economics and unable to meet the research needs of rural communities. Ninety-eight percent of ERS’ research scientists were agricultural economists in 2019.⁷⁵ ERS’ research staff also lacks racial and ethnic diversity, further limiting its capacity to examine issues affecting people of color. Of the 83 research scientists on its staff in 2019, 62 were white (75%), 5 were Hispanic (6%), and 5 were Black (6%).⁷⁶ ERS will need to hire more social scientists with training outside of economics—while also recruiting more non-white ones—in order to provide the public with critical analysis on poverty, racial inequities, climate change mitigation, and other important topics affecting rural America.

Program and producer data. As USDA works to advance climate-friendly practices, it will be critical for the department to collect additional data to understand how its commodity, crop insurance, and conservation programs impact farm finances, practices, and the climate. USDA’s data on Federal Crop Insurance Program participants is especially limited due to a general prohibition against data disclosure that does not apply to other programs.⁷⁷ There is no compelling public policy justification for such a prohibition.⁷⁸ Congress should repeal it and require USDA to collect and report data on participating operations and, when possible, their practices.

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As discussed below in Chapter V.B.6, USDA has consistently failed to enforce conservation compliance requirements, which prohibit producers enrolled in a number of federal farm programs from producing agricultural products on highly erodible land without a conservation plan or on unconverted wetlands under any circumstances.⁷⁹ The department’s failure to enforce these basic conservation protections results in environmental degradation and, in some parts of the country, substantially higher agricultural emissions. There are a number of factors that have contributed to this failure, many of which we detail below, but a lack of data transparency plays an important role. A report by the Farm Bill Law Enterprise, a group of non-partisan legal scholars and clinical programs, found that effective enforcement of conservation compliance requirements was hindered by insufficient data on compliance enforcement and program efficacy.⁸⁰ The Farm Bill Law Enterprise recommended that Congress require “compliance and enforcement data [to be made] available to the public and reported in a timely manner to Congress, with a granularity comparable to the Agricultural Census.”⁸¹ This would require the department to develop tracking and reporting procedures necessary to enforce conservation compliance, while ensuring that Congress and the public remain informed about these important conservation protections.⁸²

What little data USDA does collect on producers and landowners is often kept in the dark due to a special-interest provision known as §1619, which was introduced in the 2008 Farm Bill.⁸³ Section 1619 prohibits USDA from disclosing information provided by producers or landowners about their operations, practices, or land in order to participate in USDA programs, as well as any geospatial information collected by the department about such agricultural land or operations.

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The only exceptions allow the department to release information: (1) to a person or federal, state, local, or tribal agency working in cooperation with any USDA program when providing technical or financial assistance with respect to the agricultural operation, agricultural land, or farming or conservation practices; (2) when necessary for a response to a disease or pest threat to agriculture operations; (3) if the program information has been transformed into a statistical or aggregate form without naming any individual owner, operator, or producer; or (4) if the agricultural producer or owner consents to its release.

As a result of its broad language and narrow exceptions, §1619 has impeded USDA efforts to oversee its programs and conduct scientific research⁸⁷ and increased inefficiencies between federal and state conservation programs.⁸⁸ It has also reduced the effectiveness of state programs,⁸⁹ and state and regional partnerships.⁹⁰ Without access to USDA’s data on Clean Water Act compliance at CAFOs, for example, EPA and state agencies are unable to effectively enforce the Clean Water Act.⁹¹ Section 1619 also keeps civic and watchdog groups from tracking how USDA payments are distributed, reducing their ability to identify waste and fraud, or to evaluate whether programs are meeting their stated goals.

Agriculture is the only sector in which businesses receiving government payments for non-classified activities are shielded from public oversight. Congress should eliminate this loophole and repeal §1619. The section impedes interagency collaboration, the prevention of waste of

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public funds, and research into climate change, which poses a critical threat to agricultural production. Failing congressional action, USDA should expand the Conservation Cooperator program that allows confidential sharing of information, beyond the very few currently approved and tightly managed Cooperators.⁹²

5. Extension Service

One of the most significant challenges facing carbon farming may be the difficulty inherent in learning, adopting, and disseminating new agricultural practices. Even large-scale farm operations may be loath to try new practices since they have previously invested significant sums in infrastructure and equipment designed for conventional practices.⁹³ And unlike in other industries where reducing emissions often entails the adoption of widely applicable practices or technology, each farm operation must contend with a range of unique variables, such as soil and climate conditions. Finally, some measures, like reducing nitrogen fertilizer overapplication, may seem too risky given all the other uncertainties of farming.

The Cooperative Extension System (CES) has often proven to be an effective mechanism for disseminating and perpetuating new agricultural practices.⁹⁴ For example, no-till farming has spread more deeply and more rapidly in states where extension services have advocated for its use.⁹⁵ Research also indicates that farmers are more receptive to learning new information and practices from extension programs than they are from other government bodies. An extensive 2012 survey of Corn Belt farmers found that 63% of the respondents believed that extension services should help farmers prepare for “increased weather variability”—despite the fact that only 41% of the surveyed farmers believed that climate change was caused by human activity.⁹⁶

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In contrast, only 43% believed that state and federal agencies should help farmers to prepare for changing weather patterns.⁹⁷

As with federal funding for agricultural research, funding for the extension system is historically low. The federal government spent approximately the same amount on the extension system in 2016 as it did in 1992 without accounting for inflation.⁹⁸ When the amount is adjusted for inflation, the extension service’s budget was only about 60% of what it was in 1992. This drop in funding has accompanied a decline in the extension service’s influence, and agribusiness and private consultants have filled the void.⁹⁹ Congress should at a minimum double the extension system’s budget to $900 million, designating the additional funds for climate-related education, programming, and services. Distribution of these funds should favor states providing matching funds in order to reward states that invest in carbon farming and to help win local buy-in for the new extension program.

A long-term drop in funding has severely hindered extension’s ability to disseminate information on new practices or to reach underserved populations. The number of county extension agents fell by 30% nationwide between 1980 and 2010,¹⁰⁰ and has likely continued to fall since then. Some states have also seen dramatic declines in extension specialists—research faculty that work with agents to provide programming.¹⁰¹ As a result, farmers must increasingly turn to agribusiness dealers focused on making sales for information about crops, practices, and services.¹⁰² Private-sector consultants generally either work for, or have close financial ties to, chemical and other conventional agribusiness firms and are poorly positioned—and often disincentivized—to help farmers implement cutting-edge climate-friendly

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practices.¹⁰³ This is exacerbated by the fact that cash-strapped extension systems are increasingly turning to the private sector for funding, which further reduces their ability to devote resources to climate-friendly practices that do not directly benefit industry.¹⁰⁴

NIFA, which received $484 million in 2018 to administer the extension system and help fund state extension services,¹⁰⁵ currently does little to support climate mitigation through the extension system. NIFA should immediately begin offering resources for carbon farming within the extension system, as it does for other issues, such as weed control and youth education. It should also work with states to ensure that all extension agents are knowledgeable about climate-friendly practices and should fund specialists who focus primarily on climate mitigation practices in order to ensure an inhouse constituency and expertise.

Just as the extension service played an important role in disseminating modern agricultural practices in the 20th century, Congress should either expressly expand the mandate of existing extension services or fund a new climate extension service. This extension capacity can build on the base of the existing (as of 2021) Climate Hubs, 10 regional centers established by USDA in 2014 to provide much-needed support for climate mitigation and adaptation efforts by translating climate research into tools, materials, and methods for extension and outreach.¹⁰⁶ Although funding for the extension service largely comes from state and local sources, federal funding for climate-related extension will be critical—particularly in states where policymakers deny anthropogenic climate change.¹⁰⁷ Any climate-focused extension program will also need to have a clear climate-focused mission and retain institutional independence to ensure that its efforts are not compromised by local political dynamics.

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