ITHACA, N.Y. -- In meeting the greenhouse gas emission targets of tomorrow, the United States should turn to its farms today.
In a recent briefing to congressional legislative analysts, David Wolfe, Cornell University professor of horticulture and Antonio Bento, Cornell professor of applied economics and management, proposed solutions to problematic policy issues associated with carbon offset programs. They suggest focusing on agriculture and forestry in cap-and-trade systems by aggregating individual farms and landowners in large geographic scales that take into account small and large participants as well as the most appropriate mitigation techniques for the area, given soil type, climate and other factors that vary the success of carbon strategies.
The full text of their policy brief is available at www.cals.cornell.edu/cals/
public/comm/news/capitol.cfm.
Necessary tool
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Encouraging agricultural and forestry carbon sequestration and greenhouse gas mitigation is a necessary tool to meet U.S. emissions targets, scientists says, but implementation challenges have relegated the sector to a marginal role in national and international cap and trade and energy policies, including those currently being discussed by U.S. legislators.
Agriculture and forestry is the only U.S. economic sector that readily can change practices, and not only reduce its own emissions -- about 8 percent of U.S. totals -- but also further reduce greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere, potentially 10 percent to 25 percent of total annual emissions.
Hurdles
Obstacles to such implementation include "leakage," "permanence" and "additionality."
Leakage is the term used to describe unwanted side-effects of the system. For example, if you pay someone to "afforest" idle land -- that is, plant new trees -- a subsequent rise in market prices for lumber may encourage others to harvest their trees, negating part of the net positive impact. The impermanence of carbon sequestration also is an issue, a forest fire for example, that could wipe out all gains years after a land-owner received a financial incentive for greenhouse gas-beneficial practices. Additionality essentially is whether the program ends up providing incentives for something a farmer or forest owner might chose to do anyway for other reasons, which means there is no additional benefit from the program.
Efforts to include the agriculture sector also are hampered by the diversity of players, from small family farms and landowners to large agribusinesses. Most offset programs -- which require measurement and verification by individual entities -- impose transactions costs that preclude a smaller operation to flourish, according to the professors.
Best management
Bento and Wolfe argue that cap-and-trade implementation approaches that aggregate individual land managers and function at a large geographic scale can greatly reduce transaction costs and buffer the system from year-to-year performance variation, focusing instead on providing incentives to adopt best management practices for meeting carbon emission targets.
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Further, the professors say that in addition to the existing mechanisms for this sector to enter the carbon economy, the U.S. Congress should consider a parallel set-aside program that would provide an option for states -- if they so choose -- to develop a plan for using funds to create emission-reduction incentives and adopting best management practices.
Editor's Note: Friedlander is assistant director for Cornell University's Press Relations Office in Ithaca, N.Y.
