At first glance, reducing net agricultural greenhouse gas emissions through public law poses a considerable challenge.

Agriculture operates on a “parallel regulatory framework,” in which farms are provided safe harbors from regulations in a number of areas, including labor, antitrust, and the environment.¹ Indeed, the agriculture industry’s exemptions from environmental regulations are so ubiquitous that the environmental regulation of agriculture has been referred to as a body of “anti-law.”²

While the federal government may do little to regulate agriculture’s negative externalities, it is heavily involved in the industry as a financer, insurer, and funder of research.

Many of the proposals to reduce emissions in this chapter benefit a wide range of constituencies, increasing their political viability. Climate-friendly practices can increase the supply of healthy food,⁴ reduce pollution in rural

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communities,⁵ and improve farmworker health outcomes.⁶ These practices can also reduce costs, increase soil health and fertility, and make farms and grazing lands more resilient to climate change, all of which can increase producer profitability, as has already been demonstrated by thousands of farmers and ranchers around the country.

The federal government spends almost $3 billion annually on agricultural research, development, and extension programs, much of which can be used to support climate mitigation efforts. Congress should increase funding for the department to develop and disseminate information on and assistance for climate-friendly practices and crop varieties. The department should also strengthen its capacity to collect, report, and analyze data on climate-friendly practices and systems. Since 2018, the federal government has subsidized agriculture with about $20 billion annually through farm bill commodity, conservation, and insurance programs, while also providing the sector with tens of billions of dollars through short-term subsidy, lending, and trade programs. These subsidies should prioritize programs and practices with the greatest climate benefits and exclude environmentally harmful operations and products. And agricultural operations that do not follow basic conservation practices should not be eligible to receive funds through USDA. Congress should create, or USDA should develop, a system that pays for ecosystem services in place of the current farm safety net. Such a system would be independent of the volatility of commodity markets and thus would provide greater and more stable benefits to farmers, rural communities, and the environment.

After examining traditional farm programs, we turn to grazing on public land and perennial agriculture. Each of these two types of production

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must play an important role in decarbonizing agriculture and, thus, merits their own set of recommendations. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) (within the U.S. Department of the Interior) and U.S. Forest Service (USFS) (within USDA), which together oversee more than one-third of all grazing lands in the United States, can regulate grazing on those lands, but have so far failed to sufficiently limit practices that increase emissions. Addressing this regulatory gap will reduce emissions while potentially fostering carbon sequestration on hundreds of millions of acres. Federal policy should also be redirected to support perennial agriculture, which provides a powerful means of natural carbon sequestration. We conclude the chapter with a set of recommendations designed to reduce disparities in funding between annual and perennial crop production, and quickly expand perennial systems.