Articles Tagged with ''EQIP''

Republicans on the House Agriculture Committee are raising concerns the Biden administration is putting too much emphasis on promoting climate-related ag practices, with one GOP member suggesting the policy was increasing food prices.

Conservation groups and the Biden administration  are betting big that the promise of direct payments to farmers will supercharge their interest in cover crops, a practice relatively few have tried despite documented benefits to soil health, greenhouse emissions and water quality.

USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service will fund three projects aimed at improving water quality in three watersheds in 2022.

The Biden administration and congressional Democrats are aiming to use the agriculture provisions in the Build Back Better bill to jump-start farmers’ work on climate-related farming practices and potentially create permanently higher levels of funding for conservation programs.

Vermont Democrat Patrick Leahy, a longtime member and former chair of the Senate Ag Committee who took a special interest in the nation’s dairy and organic policy, plans to retire at the end of his current term.

A provision of congressional Democrats' Build Back Better Act that would pay producers $25 per acre to plant cover crops is getting serious attention from sectors in the agriculture industry with ambitious climate goals, though others are unsure of how effective the measure will be in comparison to existing programs.

Democrats released a scaled-back, $1.8 trillion version of President Joe Biden's Build Back Better plan Thursday that includes key climate-smart ag provisions, including a new $25-per-acre payment for cover crops, while creating a new low-carbon tax credit for biofuels.

The huge budget reconciliation bill that Democrats are trying to agree on would reshape a large section of the farm bill ahead of schedule, angering farm-state Republicans who fear it will be difficult to alter the dramatically increased spending allocations for conservation programs.

We now have the details on the $28 billion plan that Democrats have developed for funding climate-smart agriculture. According to a summary circulating on Capitol Hill and obtained by Agri-Pulse, the plan features a new $5 billion program to provide direct payments to farmers who plant cover crops.

Agri-Pulse obtained a summary of the long-awaited $28 billion conservation plan that Democrats are circulating on Capitol Hill.