About The Alliance

INCREASE AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTIVITY
Agricultural productivity plays a crucial role in achieving climate objectives and maintaining global food security; unfortunately, it is often excluded as a key consideration in conservation initiatives.
The Alliance utilizes findings from Virginia Tech’s influential seminal Global Agricultural Productivity Reports© to deliver recommendations on integrating productivity into conservation programs.
DEVELOP STRONG MARKETS
As consumer demand for sustainable food continues to rise, producers can enhance their market competitiveness by implementing conservation practices.
Through the Alliance, producers will be able to access opportunities to access new climate-smart markets, demonstrating their dedication to sustainable agriculture.
ENHANCE CLIMATE RESILIENCE
Climate-smart agriculture is an integrated approach that manages cropland, livestock, forests, and fisheries to address the intertwined challenges of food security and climate change. This approach aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and sequester carbon, providing benefits that extend beyond individual farms and ranches.
Climate-smart farming practices help farms better withstand extreme weather, allowing them to maintain consistent yields.

THE FRAMEWORK

For widespread adoption, climate-smart agricultural programs must be financially beneficial for producers

Currently, only 3% of producers participate in voluntary carbon markets.

Payments for the greenhouse gas benefits of climate-smart agricultural practices often do not cover producers’ implementation costs, resulting in financial losses. Producers also lack the upfront resources to adopt the required technology and equipment, or to take on yield risks. And they cannot pass these costs on to consumers.

Climate-smart practices can deliver environmental benefits worth 400% more than just the greenhouse gas value, especially from water quality in crops and air quality in livestock. Paying producers a rate that reflects these combined environmental benefits enables them to earn a reasonable return, which in turn drives rapid adoption and the supply of climate-smart commodities.

This pilot project uniquely compensates producers with a payment that exceeds costs and reflects the full public value of the stacked environmental benefits.

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Sustainable agricultural productivity growth is critical for achieving global climate goals

Increasing agricultural productivity is critically important to achieving climate goals and global food security, yet a focus on productivity is often absent from climate-smart agricultural programs.

Productivity-enhancing practices may have adverse environmental impacts; however, including climate and environmental goals is achievable. This project will draw on insights from Virginia Tech’s seminal Global Agricultural Productivity Report© to deliver recommendations on integrating productivity considerations within our climate-smart pilot program.

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Climate-smart programs typically fail to work for underserved producers

This Alliance works for producers of all sizes and types.

Private market programs often require administrative burdens that prevent equitable access for small and limited resource producers, which includes the majority of socially disadvantaged producers.

Our pilot demonstrates an equitable program by:

  • easing the administrative burden on producers;
  • offering minimum payments and equity payments to address historic discrimination;
  • tailoring outreach to underserved communities; and
  • providing support limited resource producers in using the Carbon Management Evaluation Tool (COMET)

The Alliance Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee includes relevant Tribal representatives, the National Black Growers Council, and invited members of a young farmer organization, an indigenous representative from a national livestock association, a female small dairy operator, a young, small-scale, LGBTQ producer, a national corn association leader, among others, to advocate for and represent underserved producers.

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A climate-smart certificate is needed to address supply chain challenges and alleviate barriers for producers

Current market criteria for demonstrating environmental benefits are often too rigid, focusing on established practices rather than encouraging innovation and adaptability.

Many existing certifications require companies to provide extensive documentation and meet specific benchmarks that often reinforce existing norms rather than pushing the boundaries of what is possible regarding sustainability.

The Alliance pilot will test a program model to verify and measure total and net greenhouse gas benefits, enabling the private sector to purchase climate-smart commodity certificates and claim additional investments using average net greenhouse gas reductions. Early adopters would be fairly compensated by the program, both gross and net impacts would be reported, and private sector actors will claim only the net impacts to meet their reporting needs. This model also resolves supply chain barriers by separating the certificate from the need for chain of custody tracking. High-end estimates of private-sector market carbon farming are only $5 billion, while the cost of national adoption of climate-smart practices is approximately $50 billion.

Additionally, the pilot will conduct research on consumer willingness to pay for various climate-smart labels to help assess the size of the climate-smart market and label effectiveness.

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Guidance is needed on how to support producers to effectively use and market environmental impact tools

The Carbon Management Evaluation Tool (COMET) is an evaluation tool designed to provide the estimated greenhouse gas impacts of conservation practices, without extensive on-site sampling.

Conservation practices are essential for mitigating climate change, and tools like COMET-Planner can empower farmers to adopt these practices. However, the successful implementation of conservation efforts depends heavily on the guidance and resources made available to producers.

Currently, very few producers have experience with COMET-Planner. This pilot project aims to identify the support that producers need in order to use the tool effectively. The pilot will use several approaches to inform the types of support needed, including:

Based on the findings from outcome evaluations and producer interviews, the Alliance will develop tailored support strategies for producers.  These may include workshops, online tutorials, and resource guides designed to educate producers on the effective utilization of COMET-Planner.

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Greater incentives are needed for livestock producers

Livestock producers navigate a complex web of pressures that influence their decision-making.  To address these challenges, the Alliance will implement a unique payment system for animal feeding operations.  This system aims to lower the barriers to adopting sustainable practices and incentivize the delivery of ecosystem services from swine, dairy, poultry, and beef operations.

Economic incentivization of climate-smart livestock management requires specific consideration due to:

  • the unique variability in investment associated with mitigation options (e.g., cost of feed supplements vs lagoon covers);
  • the trade-offs among environmental impact, animal productivity, farm profitability, and other sustainability metrics such as consumer acceptance and animal wellbeing; and
  • the need for farm-specific planning and evaluation of effective, appropriate, affordable, and timely mitigation strategies

A Livestock Working Group will be established in Minnesota and Virginia to implement high-value and high-cost climate-smart practices in Animal Feeding Operations (AFOs).  More information about this sub-pilot will be released soon.

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