As we celebrate this Earth Day, we want to share a few examples of USDA’s commitment to climate-smart research and scientific investments.
USDA science efforts focus on understanding the full range of potential climate impacts, developing science-based solutions, deploying strategies, conducting analyses, creating market opportunities using climate-smart production practices and developing innovative tools for farmers, ranchers and producers.
USDA’s Climate Hubs develop and deliver valuable science-based information to agricultural producers and U.S. communities and the Hubs charged with advancing USDA efforts to promote climate-resilient landscapes and rural economic systems. It’s a unique collaboration across USDA and with partnering organizations that brings USDA research into practice.
Earlier this year, USDA announced a $9 million investment in Climate Hubs partnerships with Cooperative Extension to bolster climate research and share climate-smart solutions directly with the agricultural community. Under this partnership, projects focus on building net-zero emissions in agriculture on working lands and in communities.
USDA launched the Agriculture Innovation Mission for Climate — an international initiative that seeks to address climate change and global hunger by uniting participants to significantly increase investment in and support for climate-smart agriculture and food systems innovation. This effort is vital to protect our planet and enable solutions at the intersection of agriculture and climate.
USDA also plays an important role in supporting clean energy. USDA joined the government-wide Sustainable Aviation Fuels Grand Challenge to enable scale-up of the production and use of sustainable aviation fuels to meet 100% of domestic aviation fuel demand by 2050. USDA researchers are developing Earth-friendly agricultural feedstocks to support this effort.
These USDA-supported efforts—among many others—are part of USDA’s commitment to transform our nation’s food and energy systems in climate-smart ways that will protect our planet for generations to come.
