The USDA is committed to supporting a diverse range of farmers, ranchers, and private forest landowners. That includes Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities, conservation, and disaster assistance.
Robert Bonnie is the under secretary for the USDA Farm Production and Conservation. He helps farmers and forest landowners by implementing programs to mitigate risks.
“The most important thing we are trying to do is to build an approach on climate change that actually works for producers,” Bonnie says. “We spent a lot of time listening to producers over the last year-and-a-half so that we can build something that actually works for agriculture and is what they want.”
Partnerships with producers, conservation groups, and others about collaboration is what Bonnie and his team are focusing on. They are looking for ways that they can build new markets where producers get rewarded for their stewardship.
Bonnie says, “That approach is going to be critically important as we’re also going to make sure that we invest in monitoring and the measurement so we’re able to prove to the taxpayer that these are investment opportunities.”
There are additional resources for agriculture in the inflation reduction act. One is the digital dollars they have not only to partner with producers as they deploy those practices, but also to help build the infrastructure. Bonnie says that they recognize that agriculture is very diverse and they want to help producers decide how they want to move forward rather than dictating it for them
The second piece they’re working on is providing better loan servicing options.
“We need to keep people in agriculture and that’s our goal here, to support producers,” adds Bonnie. “We think this approach to our farm loans and finance program is a way to benefit all of agriculture and we think we can make significant strides here that will benefit everybody and build public support for everything we do.”
USDA Farm Production and Conservation are working to streamline the farm loan application to try and get new people involved in agriculture. There is a rising interest in urban agriculture that Bonnie feels if they can provide resources, more people will begin utilizing the available resources.
“Moving forward, the next two years will be about execution and figuring out how we can provide our resources better. There will be less policy announcements and more of us executing and delivering for U.S. agriculture,” says Bonnie.
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