USDA approves climate funds for unproven practices, say EWG

The USDA has inflated its spending total for climate mitigation by including practices that are not proven to reduce greenhouse gas emissions or sequester carbon in the soil, said the Environmental Working Group on Wednesday. The USDA said EWG’s conclusions were “fundamentally flawed, speculative, and rest on incorrect assumptions.”

In a report, the EWG pointed to 15 conservation practices that were added last fall to USDA’s list of climate-smart mitigation activities for the cost-sharing Environmental Quality Incentives Program. The new practices were listed as “provisional” and include “soil carbon amendment,” “prescribed burning,” “waste storage facility,” and “microirrigation.”

The USDA “has decided to create an alternate reality where certain farming practices are called ‘climate-smart’ without data to support that designation — corrupting efforts both to reduce agricultural emissions and to accurately measure what taxpayers are getting for their money,” said Anne Schechinger, EWG agricultural economist and author of the report.

With the new practices, EQIP spending on climate mitigation would be twice as large as in the past and amount to $6 of every $10 in spending, said the EWG. The 2022 climate, health, and tax law earmarked $19.5 billion for climate spending within the USDA land stewardship program, with $8.45 billion for EQIP.

“Unfortunately, EWG did not take into account the rigorous, science-based methodology used by USDA to determine eligible practices, nor the level of specificity required during the implementation process to ensure the practices’ climate-smart benefits are being maximized,” said a USDA spokesman.

The EWG report is available here.