Carbon-trading, a boon for dairy farmers with environmentally friendly protocols, will get a shot in the arm from the new USDA Office of Ecosystem Services and Markets. According to USDA, agriculture producers provide many ecosystem services which have historically been viewed as free benefits to society — clean water and air, wildlife habitat, carbon storage and scenic landscapes.
Lacking a formal structure to market these services, farmers, ranchers and forest landowners are not generally compensated for providing these critical public benefits. So, the idea is to promote ecosystem markets. Market-based approaches to conservation have proven to be a cost-effective method to achieve environmental goals and sustain working and natural landscapes.
USDA has announced plans to establish a new USDA Office of Ecosystem Services and Markets and to create a federal government-wide Conservation and Land Management Environmental Services Board to assist the secretary of agriculture in the development of new technical guidelines and science-based methods to assess environmental service benefits which will in turn promote markets for ecosystem services including carbon trading to mitigate climate change.
“Our nation’s farms, ranches and forests provide goods and services that are vital to society — natural assets we call “ecosystem services,” said Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer. “The Office of Ecosystem Services and Markets will enable America’s agriculture producers to better compete, trade their services around the world, and make significant contributions to help improve the environment.”
Shafer said he will name Sally Collins as the director of the Office of Ecosystem Services and Markets (OESM). Organizationally, OESM will have direct access to the secretary. Collins will assume this position after serving as associate chief of the USDA Forest Service for the past eight years, where she pioneered concepts for ecosystem services and markets as part of that agency’s sustainable land management mission.
OESM will provide administrative and technical assistance to the secretary in developing guidelines and tools needed to create and expand markets for ecosystem services and will support the work of the Conservation and Land Management Environmental Services Board.
As directed by the authorizing legislation, the first ecosystem services to be examined will be carbon sequestration. The Office of Ecosystem Services and Markets and the Conservation and Land Management Environmental Services Board will be established to implement actions authorized by the 2008 farm bill.
Nominations will be sought in the near future for a federally chartered public advisory committee to advise the board. The advisory committee will include farmers, ranchers, and forest landowners, tribal representatives, as well as representatives from state natural resource and environmental agencies, agriculture departments, and conservation and environmental organizations.
3 Comments on “New USDA Office Will Provide Eosystem Services”
Australia Carbon Farmers congratulate American farmers for their breakthrough on carbon credits and congratulate the new government for its leadership role in this issue. Biosequestration (via photosynthesis) is the only way the human race has to remove the Legacy Load of CO2e that is already up there and is capable of driving the Planet through the dangerous 2°C limit. The world is not going to stop burning coal until alternatives reach critical mass and none of them can do that for at least 25 years. The world’s 5.5billion hectares of agricultural lands have massive capacity and are fully deployed, needing only the incentive of carbon credits to see the land management techniques shift from carbon emitting to carbon capture and hold. You can’t plant enough forests in the time we have left (Stern’s decade is already 2 years old) and they tend to be emitters in their early years. The USA, through this bold move by your new President, can lead the world – including India and China who each have billions of hectares of carbon-depleted agricultural soils which, if they became carbon ‘sinks’, might change the minds of their governments about signing on for Kyoto – to a new, timely solution to climate chaos before it gets any worse. Those of us in the soil carbon movement in Australia (which is in the grip of climate change and has been grappling with the issue of biosequestration for several years – see carboncoalitionoz.blogspot.com) urge you to avoid the Tower of Babel that is the science of soil carbon. Farmers in Australia have demonstrated that even our ancient and degraded soils can “grow” carbon at rates no conventional scientist can believe is possible – at between 1% and 2% per year and more – because conventional science has not had time to study the new “Carbon Farming” techniques that impact positively on ecosystems, biodiversity, and soil fertility and health. For this reason, no scientist can give a informed opinion of the ‘potential’ of your soils to sequester carbon. That is, until they have studied the advanced “Carbon Farming” techniques adopted here in Australia where we have been lashed by extremes of Climate Change for more than a decade. The techniques include various combinations of the following: new grazing management techniques, new combination cropping/grazing systems – called pasture cropping and perennial cover cropping, biological and biodynamic farming, and probiotic inoculation. Traditional science is hamstrung by its need to conduct 3 year trials and then take 2 years for the results to appear in a peer-reviewed journal before it will say it is so. When the world is given 10 years (2 years ago) to do something serious about Climate Change, we feel that waiting for half the time to satisfy science before starting to deploy the solution is not appropriate. Professor Rattan Lal and Dr John Kimble – both eminent American soil scientists – have pleaded with their colleagues to take a ‘real world’ approach to this challenge. Australian scientists are moving rapidly to provide data quickly.(The world’s only conference on Carbon Farming where scientists and farmers report on their experiences and experiments is in its second year in Australia – DVD of proceedings available via blogsite) We have also published The Carbon Farming Handbook and Issues Manual, the first publication of its kind. (Via Blogsite or 612 6374 0329) We are a non-profit/non-income voluntary operation funded by an overdraft on our farm which is maxing out, and whatever we can earn speaking, consulting, and selling our information. Good luck!
Australia Carbon Farmers congratulate American farmers for their breakthrough on carbon credits and congratulate the new government for its leadership role in this issue. Biosequestration (via photosynthesis) is the only way the human race has to remove the Legacy Load of CO2e that is already up there and is capable of driving the Planet through the dangerous 2°C limit. The world is not going to stop burning coal until alternatives reach critical mass and none of them can do that for at least 25 years. The world’s 5.5billion hectares of agricultural lands have massive capacity and are fully deployed, needing only the incentive of carbon credits to see the land management techniques shift from carbon emitting to carbon capture and hold. You can’t plant enough forests in the time we have left (Stern’s decade is already 2 years old) and they tend to be emitters in their early years. The USA, through this bold move by your new President, can lead the world – including India and China who each have billions of hectares of carbon-depleted agricultural soils which, if they became carbon ‘sinks’, might change the minds of their governments about signing on for Kyoto – to a new, timely solution to climate chaos before it gets any worse. Those of us in the soil carbon movement in Australia (which is in the grip of climate change and has been grappling with the issue of biosequestration for several years – see carboncoalitionoz.blogspot.com) urge you to avoid the Tower of Babel that is the science of soil carbon. Farmers in Australia have demonstrated that even our ancient and degraded soils can “grow” carbon at rates no conventional scientist can believe is possible – at between 1% and 2% per year and more – because conventional science has not had time to study the new “Carbon Farming” techniques that impact positively on ecosystems, biodiversity, and soil fertility and health. For this reason, no scientist can give a informed opinion of the ‘potential’ of your soils to sequester carbon. That is, until they have studied the advanced “Carbon Farming” techniques adopted here in Australia where we have been lashed by extremes of Climate Change for more than a decade. The techniques include various combinations of the following: new grazing management techniques, new combination cropping/grazing systems – called pasture cropping and perennial cover cropping, biological and biodynamic farming, and probiotic inoculation. Traditional science is hamstrung by its need to conduct 3 year trials and then take 2 years for the results to appear in a peer-reviewed journal before it will say it is so. When the world is given 10 years (2 years ago) to do something serious about Climate Change, we feel that waiting for half the time to satisfy science before starting to deploy the solution is not appropriate. Professor Rattan Lal and Dr John Kimble – both eminent American soil scientists – have pleaded with their colleagues to take a ‘real world’ approach to this challenge. Australian scientists are moving rapidly to provide data quickly.(The world’s only conference on Carbon Farming where scientists and farmers report on their experiences and experiments is in its second year in Australia – DVD of proceedings available via blogsite) We have also published The Carbon Farming Handbook and Issues Manual, the first publication of its kind. (Via Blogsite or 612 6374 0329) We are a non-profit/non-income voluntary operation funded by an overdraft on our farm which is maxing out, and whatever we can earn speaking, consulting, and selling our information. Good luck!
Australia Carbon Farmers congratulate American farmers for their breakthrough on carbon credits and congratulate the new government for its leadership role in this issue. Biosequestration (via photosynthesis) is the only way the human race has to remove the Legacy Load of CO2e that is already up there and is capable of driving the Planet through the dangerous 2°C limit. The world is not going to stop burning coal until alternatives reach critical mass and none of them can do that for at least 25 years. The world’s 5.5billion hectares of agricultural lands have massive capacity and are fully deployed, needing only the incentive of carbon credits to see the land management techniques shift from carbon emitting to carbon capture and hold. You can’t plant enough forests in the time we have left (Stern’s decade is already 2 years old) and they tend to be emitters in their early years. The USA, through this bold move by your new President, can lead the world – including India and China who each have billions of hectares of carbon-depleted agricultural soils which, if they became carbon ‘sinks’, might change the minds of their governments about signing on for Kyoto – to a new, timely solution to climate chaos before it gets any worse. Those of us in the soil carbon movement in Australia (which is in the grip of climate change and has been grappling with the issue of biosequestration for several years – see carboncoalitionoz.blogspot.com) urge you to avoid the Tower of Babel that is the science of soil carbon. Farmers in Australia have demonstrated that even our ancient and degraded soils can “grow” carbon at rates no conventional scientist can believe is possible – at between 1% and 2% per year and more – because conventional science has not had time to study the new “Carbon Farming” techniques that impact positively on ecosystems, biodiversity, and soil fertility and health. For this reason, no scientist can give a informed opinion of the ‘potential’ of your soils to sequester carbon. That is, until they have studied the advanced “Carbon Farming” techniques adopted here in Australia where we have been lashed by extremes of Climate Change for more than a decade. The techniques include various combinations of the following: new grazing management techniques, new combination cropping/grazing systems – called pasture cropping and perennial cover cropping, biological and biodynamic farming, and probiotic inoculation. Traditional science is hamstrung by its need to conduct 3 year trials and then take 2 years for the results to appear in a peer-reviewed journal before it will say it is so. When the world is given 10 years (2 years ago) to do something serious about Climate Change, we feel that waiting for half the time to satisfy science before starting to deploy the solution is not appropriate. Professor Rattan Lal and Dr John Kimble – both eminent American soil scientists – have pleaded with their colleagues to take a ‘real world’ approach to this challenge. Australian scientists are moving rapidly to provide data quickly.(The world’s only conference on Carbon Farming where scientists and farmers report on their experiences and experiments is in its second year in Australia – DVD of proceedings available via blogsite) We have also published The Carbon Farming Handbook and Issues Manual, the first publication of its kind. (Via Blogsite or 612 6374 0329) We are a non-profit/non-income voluntary operation funded by an overdraft on our farm which is maxing out, and whatever we can earn speaking, consulting, and selling our information. Good luck!