VT awarded $80M grant to help explore climate safe agricultural practices - WFXRtv.com
VT awarded $80M grant to help explore climate safe agricultural practices
BLACKSBURG, Va. ( WFXR) – Virginia Tech was awarded a record $80 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to help farmers implement climate safe practices that could significantly reduce greenhouse gasses.
VT’s College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, along with the Alliance to Advance Climate-Smart Agriculture will distribute more than $57 million of the grant money to implement a program that pays producers to start climate-smart practices on farms of all sizes, hoping to have a significant impact on curbing climate-changing gases. The program will pay $100 per acre or animal for voluntary adoption of climate-smart practices that deliver more than the amount in public environmental benefits.
Along with Arkansas, Minnesota, and North Dakota, Virginia will test the ability to running out a similar program on a national scale. If it can run on a national level, the program could help producers reduce agricultural emissions by 55% and total emissions in the country by 8-10%.
Virginia Tech researchers will be creating a model that selects participants to ensure the program is affecting and usable wide range of farmers and producers. As well as helping the environment, the program also targets boosting agricultural production to continue to feed the world’s growing population.
Additionally, VT will also be heavily involved in tracking the greenhouse gas savings of the project as they are implemented, evaluating the benefits of other environmental impacts such as reduced soil emissions, and examine a consumer’s willingness to pay for these climate-smart products.
For more information, visit www.cals.vt.edu.
Related Knowledge Center: Climate economics
Climate change is now a driver of the world’s economy. The impact is profound:
- Catastrophic weather events — hurricanes, floods, droughts, high temperatures — are more frequent and more extreme. The cost can be measured in both the initial damage caused and the longer-term impact on the economy.
- Vulnerable communities are increasing climate-related investments, hardening infrastructure and taking other protective measures.
- Investment in carbon capture and storage technologies is increasingly rapidly.
- Governments are making investments and crafting regulations to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
On top of all of this is the cost of uncertainty. As the Fourth National Climate Assessment, released in 2018 by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, says, “The assumption that current and future climate conditions will resemble the recent past is no longer valid.”