WASHINGTON – The Agriculture Department recently added farming practices that likely do not reduce greenhouse gas emissions to its “climate-smart” conservation list, misrepresenting the agricultural sector’s efforts to mitigate the worsening climate crisis, a new Environmental Working Group analysis found.
EWG’s investigation focused on the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, or EQIP, one of the USDA’s tentpole conservation initiatives, which pays farmers billions of dollars to implement conservation methods. The new data, compiled by EWG through Freedom of Information Act requests, has been added to the organization’s Conservation Database.
“As the climate crisis deepens, the USDA owes Americans meaningful action to cut emissions,” said EWG Midwest director Anne Schechinger, an agricultural economist who conducted the analysis.
“Instead, the agency 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,” she said.
In 2022 EWG revealed that only a small portion of EQIP funding went to farmers implementing climate-smart methods. EQIP is managed by the Natural Resources Conservation Service, the USDA’s conservation arm.
The USDA’s new list changes the equation significantly, effectively doubling climate-smart funding.
EWG determined that, of the $5.5 billion EQIP sent to farmers for all practices between 2017 and 2022, only $1.7 billion, or 31 percent, went to 45 practices on the 2023 climate-smart list – most of which, like cover crops and grassed waterways, have been proven to reduce emissions or sequester carbon in soil.
But with the recent addition of 15 practices the USDA is calling “provisionally climate-smart” – that is, the agency has no data showing climate benefits – that amount more than doubled, to $3.47 billion, or 63 percent of all EQIP spending.
That’s because many of the practices added to the 2024 list are the most-funded EQIP practices.
And of the newly added items, more than half – eight – relate to livestock or irrigation management.
These livestock practices almost certainly do not benefit the climate, because raising livestock is a primary source of agriculture’s emissions, and most livestock in the U.S. is raised in dense, high-volume operations.
One of the new provisionally climate-smart livestock practices even increases emissions, according to the USDA’s own data.
Irrigation practices are also not unambiguously good for the climate. Water used for growing crops interacts with climate change in complex ways, since drought and heat from the climate crisis cause more water to be used for irrigation, especially in the West.
Conservation practices designated climate-smart by the USDA are eligible for $19.5 billion in 2022 Inflation Reduction Act funds, $8.45 billion of which is meant specifically for EQIP.
The USDA has said it will conduct studies on the provisional practices to evaluate their climate benefits. In the meantime, they will continue to be considered climate-smart by the federal government and thus receive IRA funding.
“The USDA should immediately remove all so-called provisional practices from its climate-smart list,” Schechinger said. “And the IRA should not fund these practices until there is proof that they actually reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”
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The Environmental Working Group is a nonprofit, non-partisan organization that empowers people to live healthier lives in a healthier environment. Through research, advocacy and unique education tools, EWG drives consumer choice and civic action. Visit www.ewg.org for more information.
