Cows.

Cory Booker Wants to Pay Many More Farmers to Practice Carbon Farming

Today, U.S. Senator Cory Booker revealed the most significant piece of federal legislation to date aimed at harnessing nature’s power to remove carbon from the atmosphere in forests and wetlands—and on farms.

August 8, 2019 | Source: Civil Eats | by Lisa Held

The Climate Stewardship Act, which Booker plans to propose in September, aims to ‘dramatically scale up’ voluntary conservation incentives for farmers and ranchers.

Today, U.S. Senator Cory Booker revealed the most significant piece of federal legislation to date aimed at harnessing nature’s power to remove carbon from the atmosphere in forests and wetlands—and on farms.

The Climate Stewardship Act, which Booker plans to introduce in the Senate in September, is an attempt to engage farmers in climate change mitigation at an unprecedented scale. The act would increase incentives for conservation practices such as cover crops and rotational grazing, fund grants to expand renewable energy production on farms, invest in programs that bolster local food systems, and fund urban farms and community gardens in low-income communities.

It would also give farmers tools to make their farms more resilient in the face of extreme weather events and other effects of a changing climate. In the past year, record flooding has caused many farmers across the Midwest to delay or skip planting crops altogether, wildfires have burned tens of thousands of acres of rangeland in California, and Hurricane Michael caused more than a billion dollars worth of agricultural damage in the South.