For Powerful Climate Action, Investing in Climate-Smart Agriculture is The Smart Bet

After Earth Day and U.S. Climate Action Week last week, I’m feeling hopeful—and after a challenging year for all of us, that is a great feeling. Can you sense the momentum, too?  

Last week some of the most important changemakers—farmers and ranchers—had a seat at the table for tackling the climate crisis, and that’s a powerful lever for action. 

I was thrilled to see agriculture as part of the conversation. U.S. Farmers and Ranchers in Action (USFRA) and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) hosted the only agriculture and food sector-themed virtual event during Climate Week. We were honored to be joined by David Hayes, Special Assistant to the President for Climate Policy at the White House; Jim Andrew, EVP and Chief Sustainability Officer at PepsiCo; Amy Senter, Chief Sustainability Officer at Kellogg’s, and David Bennell, Food and Nature Program Lead at WBCSD North America as moderator

Agriculture belongs squarely in the center of any conversation about solving for the climate crisis. More and more, the world and the USA understand the significant contributions of its farmers, ranchers and producers and the multiple benefits they and agriculture bring to us all.

30 Harvests to Get It Right 

I often say that we have just #30Harvests to get it right. What does that mean? That represents the ability to provide food, fiber and energy harvested from our lands in the next 30 years to meet the challenge of feeding nine billion people globally by 2050. 

This fundamentally is a scale of innovation that is unprecedented to mankind, demanding a level of scale and ingenuity from every facet of our sector. It is like producing as much food by 2050 as we have produced for all of humankind in the last 8,000 years.

Yet, in my mind, this challenge is not like going to the moon or traversing the ocean. While other sectors like healthcare and tech have been on linear innovation curve, in agriculture we have something else called Mother Nature with which we have to innovate. In practice, this means that each growing season, each spring planting season or calving season, when our farmers go out into the field or enter a harvest season, it is fundamentally a chance for them to get it right. 

But increasingly they are faced with extreme and episodic events, disruptions and crises that have challenged the last eight of 10 harvest seasons. According to American Farmland Trust, we’re losing more than 83 acres of farmland per hour. That’s our potential; that’s our flyways, our green spaces, our carbon sequestration, our productive capability. 

But here’s the thing. We’re no longer in a position of business as usual, and COVID-19 made clear the importance of our sector. We have had a health crisis, but we did not have a food crisis. The food system bent but it didn’t break. This sector, our farmers and everybody in the food value chain, put every strength to work. It demonstrated, for me, what collaboration looks like at scale. 

Ushering in the Net-Zero Economy 

Farmers and ranchers can’t do this alone, and they absolutely need a seat at the table. This is where we need boots on the ground to spur the innovation for nature–based solutions for carbon. As last week showed us, the world is truly looking for solutions. Farmers and ranchers are already doing amazing things on their farms through climate-smart agriculture. We are on a pathway to reduce our carbon footprint—scientists project—by half. That is the potential I get excited about—the prospect that we could be a net-negative carbon sector, that we could usher in the transition to the next-zero economy. This will take partnering with our farmers and ranchers so they can fullfil this potential.  

I can’t imagine another sector where green happens; where rural vibrancy happens, that can reduce and equally deliver on a bio economy. Our food and ag who have demonstrated commitment to our communities during COVID-19, and they share with USFRA a vision of what we can accomplish if we join forces to pool our strengths to work on the solutions together. Food and ag represent 15 percent of the American workforce. That’s a lot of human ingenuity to marshal to the cause. 

A Sector Ripe for Transformative Investment

And that’s where transformative investment comes into play. I got my Irish up last year when I saw that $10 billion in corporate climate bonds were issued and agriculture wasn’t even considered as a sector for investment for green and rural vibrancy.  

(Sidenote: For those who don’t know me, I went to Notre Dame, so the expression “getting your Irish up” is an expression of what I’ll stand for and fight for.) 

That has to change. The investment community needs to recognize our farmers and ranchers, and the ag economy as a whole is worthy of investment for climate solutions. Just like the renewable energy sector in 2007, when we created stackable trade systems, there is potential to create a trade on carbon or monetization of ecosystem services through climate-smart agriculture. We also saw federal and state carve-outs in the renewable energy sector.  

Most important to that example is the financial community’s injection of capital that bolted alongside to support the economic growth of renewables. We see this as a recipe for truly achieving the potential of our sector for transformative climate solutions.   

 It Will Take All of Us: A Call to Action 

That is why, in this year of action on climate change leading up to COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland, I am calling on all of us to lean in and put our strengths to work to enable the food and ag sector to be all thatwe know it can be.  

 What can you do as first steps? 

1. Watch our award-winning film, 30 Harvests. 
2. Read our report on Transformative Investment for Climate-Smart Agriculture. 
3. Sign on to the Decade of Ag, the first sector-wide movement to align to a shared vision for the next decade. It’s centered around investing in the next generation of agricultural systems, restoring our environment, regenerating natural resources and in doing so, strengthening the social and economic fabric of America. 
4. Reach out to learn more about how you personally can be part of one of the most exciting sectors for truly tackling the climate crisis.