Source: The Farm Bureau’s Cunning Plan to Fight Climate Change—and Regulation | The New Republic

The American Farm Bureau Federation has recast itself as a climate warrior, pushing for private offset markets relying on the fraught science of soil sequestration.

In 1980, the American Farm Bureau Federation, currently the largest agricultural lobbying group and third-largest insurance company in the country, called for the Environmental Protection Agency to be abolished. They’ve sued it regularly ever since. The Farm Bureau lobbied against the Kyoto Protocol, the Clean Power Plan, the Waters of the United States rule, and cap and trade like they were existential threats. Their policy book and local chapters barely concede the existence of anthropogenic warming.

Now, the group is busy portraying itself as an environment and climate advocate. Two weeks after the November election, the Farm Bureau joined the Environmental Defense Fund and others in a new Food and Agriculture Climate Alliance, releasing a slate of “climate policy recommendations.” At the top, “Provide voluntary, incentive-based tools and additional technical assistance for farmers, ranchers and foresters to maximize the sequestration of carbon and the reduction of other greenhouse gas emissions, and increase climate resilience.”

In the past few months, the potential payoff from the Farm Bureau’s new strategy has become clear. Facing an administration eager to rack up climate wins, the Farm Bureau has thrown its weight behind an emerging policy: private markets for carbon offsets, grounded in fraught soil sequestration claims that are quickly being incorporated into corporate “net-zero” pledges.

The agricultural carbon sequestration idea has taken root in the Biden administration. On Monday, Politico reported that the administration now plans to roll out a million-dollar bank plan to help pay farmers to capture carbon sometime this year. But it also reported a telling detail–the Farm Bureau isn’t satisfied with the proposal yet. It wants guarantees that farmers will get paid for soil sequestration without anything else in agricultural business-as-usual changing.