4. Farm Finance and Support

More than a third of net farm income in 2019 came from government payments and programs,³⁵⁹ yet farms using perennial practices receive almost no public support. Congress should address this in part through a new federally administered crop insurance program for agroforestry and other perennial operations.

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through the Whole-Farm Revenue Protection program, but private crop insurance providers do not like to administer such policies due to the additional time and expertise required.³⁶⁰ A federal program would reduce overhead costs, while creating a national agency with the expertise necessary to effectively serve perennial operations. Congress should also create a funding pool for perennial practices within EQIP, modeled after the Organic Initiative, to ensure that any eligible operation applying for funds to transition to, or expand, perennial production is able to receive funding through the program.

Federal policies designed to expand perennial systems should not ignore field edges. While practices that introduce perennial plants to field edges, such as windbreaks and riparian buffers, do not have the same sequestration potential in the aggregate as those that transform core productive activities in the field, they nonetheless offer a number of important ecological and climate benefits.³⁶¹ In addition, programs designed to expand windbreaks and riparian buffers could introduce many farmers to perennial plants, and if designed well, encourage the adoption of perennial crops elsewhere on the operation.

During the New Deal, the Great Plains Forestry Project planted 220 million trees to, among other reasons, reduce soil erosion.³⁶² Nonetheless, Aldo Leopold in 1949 observed that federally funded conservation practices such as windbreaks had been “widely forgotten” by farmers after their five-year contract periods had expired.³⁶³ By 2017, a reported 57% of the New Dealera windbreaks in Nebraska had been removed and other Great Plains states likely have similar rates.³⁶⁴ We need a similarly ambitious program today to expand windbreaks and riparian buffers, yet we must ensure that these new windbreaks and buffers are maintained over the long term. Whether funded through conservation programs or a new payment-for-ecosystem-services program, farmers receiving funding should sign long-term contracts—and receive funding sufficient to incentivize a long-term commitment.

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