USDA announces plan to integrate climate adaptation into its missions and programs

From U.S. Department of Agriculture

WASHINGTON — As part of President Biden’s whole-of-government approach to confronting the climate crisis, the U.S. Department of Agriculture released Thursday its climate adaptation and resilience plan describing how USDA will prepare for current and future impacts of climate change.

The plan is part of USDA’s response to Executive Order 14008, Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad, which tasked all federal agencies with preparing action plans for integrating climate adaptation into their missions, programs, operations, and management. It’s one of 20 action plans that address leveraging procurement to drive innovation and increase resilience against supply chain disruptions and are in line with the president’s commitment to implementing his Justice40 Initiative. The climate adaptation and resilience plans were previously submitted to and reviewed by the National Climate Task Force, White House Council on Environmental Quality’s Federal Chief Sustainability Officer and the Office of Management and Budget in response to Biden’s Executive Order on Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad.

“Integrating climate change into USDA’s planning and decision making is critical to ensuring that America’s producers, who are on the front lines of climate change, are positioned to be successful in the long term,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said. “This Adaptation Plan lays out the framework for USDA to carry out sustained climate adaptation that addresses current and emerging climate risks and challenges.”

The Adaptation Plan is aligned with a renewed and broad effort across USDA to prioritize climate action and increase resilience to climate impacts among American producers, landowners, and communities. The plan builds on USDA’s earlier Climate-Smart Agriculture and Forestry Strategy: 90-Day Progress Report, which focused on opportunities in the agriculture and forestry sectors for climate change mitigation and carbon sequestration.

The plan follows the announcement Sept. 29 of a new initiative to finance the deployment of climate-smart farming and forestry practices to aid in the marketing of climate-smart agricultural commodities. Guided by science, USDA will support a set of pilot projects that provide incentives to implement climate smart conservation practices on working lands and to quantify and monitor the carbon and greenhouse gas benefits associated with those practices.

The Adaptation Plan identifies key climate threats to agriculture and forestry and outlines five cross-cutting adaptation actions USDA can take:

1. Build resilience across landscapes with investments in soil and forest health.

2. Increase outreach and education to promote adoption and application of climate-smart adaptation strategies.

3. Broaden access to and availability of climate data at regional and local scales for USDA Mission Areas, producers, land managers, and other stakeholders.

4. Increase support for research and development of climate-smart practices and technologies to inform USDA and help producers and land managers adapt to a changing climate.

5. Leverage the USDA Climate Hubs as a framework to support USDA Mission Areas in delivering adaptation science, technology, and tools.

The USDA Climate Hubs will continue to play an integral role in climate adaptation — see Adaptation in Action at https://www.climatehubs.usda.gov/hubs/topic/adaptation-action — through their regionally tailored outreach activities and work across USDA Mission Areas to connect climate adaptation science and practice. USDA agencies, staff offices, and Mission Areas are developing detailed strategies to integrate climate thinking throughout their activities, programs, and operations that will foster a culture of sustained climate risk management across USDA.

The White House Council on Environmental Quality and Office of Management and Budget seek public input on the agency climate adaptation plans. Members of the public may submit comments via the docket at http://www.regulations.gov , Docket ID: CEQ–2021–0003, until Nov. 6. CEQ also will hold a virtual convening this fall with national organizations who have expertise in climate adaptation and resilience or have expressed interest in the agency plans.

For more information on USDA climate programs and solutions, people can visit http://www.usda.gov/topics/climate-solutions online.

USDA touches the lives of all Americans each day in so many positive ways. In the Biden-Harris administration, USDA is transforming America’s food system with a greater focus on more resilient local and regional food production, fairer markets for all producers, ensuring access to safe, healthy and nutritious food in all communities, building new markets and streams of income for farmers and producers using climate smart food and forestry practices, making historic investments in infrastructure and clean energy capabilities in rural America, and committing to equity across the Department by removing systemic barriers and building a workforce more representative of America. To learn more, people can visit http://www.usda.gov .

The the full adaptation plan is online at https://www.sustainability.gov/pdfs/usda-2021-cap.pdf .