Carbon and Agriculture: Getting Measurable Results
Summary: The agricultural sector can help to address, mitigate, and adapt to climate change. Agriculture has significant potential to remove carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere and store (or sequester) carbon while at the same time reducing its GHG emissions—in many cases at relatively low cost. With proper policies, U.S. agriculture —which currently emits an estimated 6% of annual U.S. GHG emissions—can play a significant role in meeting the U.S. goal of achieving an 80% reduction in GHG emissions by 2050. In doing so, agricultural climate policy can both make an important contribution to the sustainable incomes of farming communities and provide a host of ancillary environmental benefits.
This report is intended to provide information useful for designing policies and programs to realize agriculture’s potential contributions to GHG mitigation.
Chapter 1. Principles: A set of core principles that C-AGG proposes to guide discussion and policy and program development in the arena of agricultural GHGs.
Chapter 3. Permanence: An examination of the concept of “permanence” and the various tools and mechanisms that have been used—and that could be effectively used—to manage the risk of carbon loss in biological systems.
Chapter 5. C-AGG Policy Recommendations: Recommendations for the incorporation of agricultural GHG emissions reductions activities into U.S. climate change policies and programs.
