This story was initially revealed by Grist.
When Debbie Stabenow retired from Congress final yr, she ended a 28-year run of advocating on the federal stage for sustainable meals techniques.
The Democrat from Michigan, who served 4 phrases within the Senate after two phrases within the Home of Representatives, is fond of claiming, “You don’t have an economic system until any individual makes one thing and any individual grows one thing.” Over the course of her profession, she proved to be a talented negotiator — securing incremental, bipartisan modifications to the nation’s farm invoice, the legislative package deal that defines United States agricultural coverage roughly each 5 years.
Stabenow secured funding for city agriculture, farmers markets, and growers of so-called specialty crops — similar to tree nuts, fruits, and greens — that are outlined in opposition to commodity crops like soybeans and wheat. In her last years in Congress, she argued that the farm invoice ought to evolve to incorporate extra local weather options. Stabenow pushed to maintain or develop funding for applications that incentivized farmers to undertake land practices that assist cut back emissions, like planting cowl crops in fields through the low season and restoring wetlands on their property. However final yr, she discovered that simply the point out of the time period “local weather” prompted talks to crumble.
“I couldn’t get my counterpart to barter,” Stabenow informed Grist at a current convention in northern Michigan, referring to John Boozman, the Republican senator from Arkansas who labored alongside her within the higher chamber’s agricultural committee. “Sadly, the time period ‘local weather’ has been so polarizing,” she added. (A consultant for Boozman declined to remark for this text.)
Stabenow’s profession — the methods she managed to develop the farm invoice and the methods she couldn’t — speaks to how tough it has grow to be for lawmakers to fund local weather initiatives. Now, she warns that these elected to the 119th Congress must be cautious of makes an attempt to roll again environmental progress.
The U.S. agricultural sector contributes about 10 % of the nation’s climate-warming emissions, based on an estimate from the Environmental Safety Company. Simply over half of these emissions come from the way in which farms handle agricultural soils, which might launch nitrous oxide, a greenhouse fuel, into the environment. Livestock — and the manure they produce, relying on the way it’s saved — are additionally main sources of methane emissions on farms.
Traditionally, most farm payments have targeted neither on lowering agricultural emissions nor on the impacts of the local weather disaster on farms, similar to the way in which extreme storms, drought, and excessive warmth affect crop manufacturing. However lately, there have been extra discussions in Congress and amongst farmers about whether or not and the way the farm invoice ought to adapt to handle these dynamics.
“We’ve seen elevated impacts for the reason that final farm invoice was handed,” mentioned Mike Lavender, coverage director on the Nationwide Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, which advocates for equitable meals techniques. He added that “farmers know” when their work is being hampered by local weather change.
At present, there’s nonetheless no new farm invoice, despite the fact that it’s greater than a yr overdue. Final yr, Congress prolonged the 2018 farm invoice till September 2025, together with round $31 billion in assist for farmers.
Passing the omnibus invoice, which encompasses applications as numerous as meals stamps, rural financial growth, and ethanol, didn’t all the time take this lengthy. Stabenow labored on 5 farm payments and through that point was in a position to improve funding and create applications for U.S. farmers huge and small. “I had lots of clout due to my seniority in chairing the Agriculture, Vitamin and Forestry Committee,” mentioned Stabenow, who served two stints as chair and was the rating Democrat on that Senate committee from 2015 to 2021. “So I may block and sort out.” When Democrats in Congress wrote the 2022 Inflation Discount Act, which might wind up being the most important local weather spending invoice in historical past, Stabenow fought to incorporate nearly $40 billion in funding for climate-smart agriculture, forestry and rural vitality applications.
The cash for climate-smart agriculture would show to be significantly controversial. The time period refers to practices which can be believed to scale back emissions or sequester carbon on farms, however some teams and lawmakers argue the class is just too broad to really be significant. Nonetheless, in her last months in Congress, Stabenow sought to safe future funding for conservation applications and climate-smart agriculture, submitting a roughly 1,400-page draft decision of the farm invoice to the Senate, despite the fact that it had nearly no probability of passing.
Stabenow’s draft textual content included a provision that may have ensured leftover cash for climate-smart agricultural practices from the Inflation Discount Act, or IRA, can be included within the subsequent farm invoice. This grew to become one of many principal irreconcilable variations between her and her Republican counterparts within the Home and Senate.
Stabenow mentioned it was vital to call local weather change in these discussions and clarify why lowering emissions issues. Local weather change is wreaking havoc on farmers: For example, cherry orchards in Michigan have not too long ago struggled with unseasonably heat and moist situations. On the East Coast, farmers handled unprecedented drought and wildfires this previous fall, which most within the area had by no means earlier than encountered. “When discussing coverage, we have to join the dots,” she mentioned in an e-mail to Grist.
Regardless of staunch gridlock in Congress, Stabenow insists that insurance policies aiming to curb emissions from agricultural lands are common sense.
“Whenever you speak to folks about conservation applications and retaining carbon within the soil and defending our land and our water from runoff with pesticides and so forth, farmers all help that,” she mentioned. “They’re all doing these practices.”
Certainly, based on the American Farm Bureau, a number one business advocacy group, U.S. farmers have elevated their use of canopy crops by 75 % over the previous 10 years whereas additionally rising adoption of different practices that trim emissions.
Nonetheless, some within the business fear that allocating cash completely for local weather applications excludes farmers from directing it to different vital makes use of. The Republican Home agriculture committee chair, Glenn Thompson of Pennsylvania, wrote in an op-ed final yr that farmers ought to have extra flexibility in learn how to use federal {dollars}. Environmental teams, in the meantime, have questioned the effectiveness of sure applications deemed “climate-smart” underneath the IRA, similar to spending on methane digesters, which create gas out of animal manure.
Even earlier than she advocated to increase the IRA’s climate-smart spending, Stabenow pushed for insurance policies that boosted meals safety and environmental conservation. Although not explicitly labeled as local weather options, these provisions assist make farms and our meals system extra resilient towards shocks from excessive climate and different impacts of worldwide warming. The 2018 farm invoice, which Stabenow led negotiations for, supplied $428 billion over its first 5 years, with 7 % of that complete aimed toward conservation applications.
A significant focus of Stabenow’s profession was rising help for specialty crops — these fruits, greens, herbs, and tree nuts — by way of farm invoice applications. These make up a giant chunk of U.S. crop manufacturing worth — up 1 / 4 in 2020, based on the U.S. Agriculture Division — however it took till 2008 for Congress to particularly embody analysis and funding for them within the farm invoice. Specialty crop growers have benefitted from Stabenow’s work to make sure they’d higher entry to crop insurance coverage and block grants, which in flip helps them deal with illness and risky climate, mentioned Jamie Clover Adams, the chief director of the Michigan Asparagus Advisory Board.
Assist for specialty crops will not be explicitly a local weather answer. Nonetheless, consultants say that diversifying our meals system can enhance resilience towards excessive climate. Moreover, sure land administration practices utilized in specialty crop farming can assist reduce its affect on the setting; cowl crops planted in barren fields through the fall and winter, for instance, assist take away carbon dioxide from the environment and retailer it within the soil. Rotating the sorts of crops grown on specialty farms may enhance soil well being, which in flip makes crops extra resilient to local weather impacts.
It made sense for Stabenow to take up the mantle for specialty crops: Michigan, which is among the nation’s most agriculturally numerous states, produces round 300 merchandise and is a number one grower of fruit and veggies like tart cherries and asparagus. (In her farewell speech to Congress, Stabenow mentioned, “I’ve incessantly mentioned you can see Michigan on each web page of the farm payments I’ve written.”) Her work on meals and agricultural coverage was typically standard throughout get together strains: She gained endorsements from business teams just like the Michigan Farm Bureau, which regularly helps Republicans. In truth, as soon as Stabenow’s seat was vacant, the Michigan Farm Bureau endorsed Republican candidate Mike Rogers as her substitute. (The race was narrowly gained by Democrat Elissa Slotkin.)
Stabenow’s dedication to all kinds of agriculture is even seen on the partitions of the Senate agriculture committee room in Washington, D.C., the place portraits of committee chairs cling. Stabenow’s portrait is stuffed with asparagus, cucumbers, corn, pumpkins, peppers, carrots, turnips, potatoes, peaches, apples, blueberries, tart cherries, and geranium flowers, in addition to dairy cows within the background. “Even when she’s not there, it’s going to be a continuing reminder that we exist and that we’re a part of farm coverage,” mentioned Adams of the Michigan Asparagus Advisory Board.
It was her dedication to specialty crop farmers that made Stabenow extensively identified and revered by advocates of sustainable meals techniques. (She’s been referred to as the “specialty crop queen” by agriculture business leaders.) Her work on previous farm payments confirmed that funding in a single kind of agriculture “doesn’t should be to the detriment of different kinds of farming,” mentioned Lavender, from the Nationwide Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.
After Stabenow’s retirement, fellow Democrats on the committee lauded her work on local weather coverage in agriculture. She “leaves behind an impactful legacy from her work as a champion for vitamin, native meals techniques, and conservation,” mentioned Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey in an e-mail.
However Stabenow’s curiosity in increasing the scope of the farm invoice additionally sparked criticism from those that believed she didn’t do sufficient to guard commodity farmers, similar to corn, soy, and cotton growers. In November 2024, when she launched the textual content of her draft farm invoice, Boozman referred to as it “insulting.” The 2 lawmakers had been break up on quite a few key points — like how a lot funding ought to go in the direction of conservation applications and meals help applications. Boozman, now the Senate agriculture committee chair, has repeatedly mentioned efforts must be targeted squarely on securing higher financial outlooks for U.S. farmers.
In early February, he invited farmers to share tales of current monetary hardship with the Senate agriculture committee. Considered one of them mentioned, “I can say certainly that it was essentially the most tough yr financially that now we have endured to date. This yr, I’m much more anxious about what’s to come back.”
Farmers have certainly been hit by declining earnings for 2 years in a row. Analysis reveals extreme climate is not less than a part of the rationale why. For her half, Stabenow hopes lawmakers will proceed supporting small, numerous farming operations — whereas pushing for local weather and conservation.
“Conservation practices usually are a win-win, as a result of it’s about retaining carbon within the soil, about retaining soil on the land and never operating off into lakes and streams,” she mentioned. “Specializing in what we name climate-smart conservation is admittedly simply doubling down on these issues which can be simplest at having the ability to seize carbon.”
