Shifting weather patterns due to climate change threaten our existence. One of the first effects being felt in Eastern Colorado is an increasing scarcity of water, which is already at the center of conflict between rural and urban Colorado communities. In addition to water scarcity, farmers have been challenged by heat and cold extremes and more frequent severe weather.
According to science, we have a decade to save our environment. We face extinction-level threats due to the exploitation of our natural resources and generations of inaction and neglect. We have the knowledge, means, and resources to lead the world on the critical mission to change our relationships with nature and one another and to save ourselves and the planet.
We have to:
- Support increased funding for soil conservation programs through the NRCS.
- Increase funding for USDA research grants for practical ways to increase soil health and improve irrigation efficiency specifically in arid environments.
- Continue to support young farmer programs and implement others that would allow younger generations of farmers to be trained by farmers with experience with the soil types, temperatures, and precipitation patterns of specific geographical areas.
- Transition away from 19th-century fossil fuel only systems to sustainable large scale biofuels, hydrogen, electric, and carbon-neutral energy systems that can operate large machinery.
- We must leverage subsidies and incentives to support a more rapid transition to a renewable energy sector and companies that demonstrate the capacity to transition.
- Shift resources and incentives to support the renewable energy sector and small local farmers practicing regenerative agriculture.
- Equitably tax and subsidize energy extraction and production industries including an offset tax on the carbon those industries produce.
- Protect energy and agricultural industry workers rights, wages, and livelihood.
The Agricultural Industry is currently a net carbon and methane producer. With smart agricultural practices, agriculture and production agriculture can become net carbon and methane sinks. Increasingly agricultural policy and sustainable practices are developed by partnering scientists and universities (like those at Colorado State) with our farming and ranching communities. These partnerships will turn agricultural industries in America and all over the world into net carbon sinks.
