THE FACTS:

What is the Farm Bill? It’s authorized once every five years to fund programs for farmers, forests, food production, and related issues. This year Congress must pass a revised version for new and existing programs. We want to ensure no cuts in funding.

$20 billion from the Inflation Reduction Act for climate-smart conservation practices and healthy forests has been allocated for the new version of the Farm Bill – we need to keep it that way since some members of Congress will move to strip or reallocate portions of these funds.

What is Agroforestry? Agroforestry integrates trees and shrubs with animal agriculture and farmed crops. That creates higher crop yields, improved soil health, carbon sequestration, reduced erosion, and more.

More trees mean more shade for livestock to provide some resilience against worsening heat. It’s been practiced worldwide for centuries. It isn’t as popular in the United States as it is in other countries, but the benefits of shade for animals are now better understood. With proper funding and attention, agroforestry fights climate change.

The $20 billion over five years is for programs that help farmers and ranchers implement conservation practices that increase carbon storage through soil nurturance and trees. Some of these agroforestry programs, like forest management, need more than the limited funds they’ve received in the past to preserve incentives crucial for expanding climate-smart practices.

What are the Benefits of Agroforestry? Trees are nature’s vacuum cleaner, pulling 12% of America’s carbon pollution out of the air each year and reducing the impacts of climate change. By protecting, expanding, and managing our forests in a climate-smart way, they can do even more – up to 22% by 2030.

Yet the world loses 25 million acres of forests per year to deforestation. That’s a lower rate than the 40 million acres annually lost in the 1990s, but we have to do much better, starting here at home.

PROTECT CLIMATE-SMART AGRICULTURE AND FORESTRY!