Spending on climate-smart projects hard to track, says UCS

Meat, dairy, and livestock are likely to get a larger share of the funding than other commodities in the USDA’s Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities program, though it’s hard to track spending on the pilot projects, said a Union of Concerned Scientists blog on Thursday. “The biggest challenge to understanding where the USDA is investing this $2.8 billion was a lack of detailed data.”

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It’s fairly certain that meat, dairy, and livestock will get the most money, because they are listed as elements in 55 of the 70 approved projects, wrote UCS interdisciplinary scientist Omanjana Goswami in the blog.

“Beyond who is receiving the funding, little information is available to assess the soundness of the investments,” she wrote. “What specific climate-smart practices will these projects and partnerships employ, and is there science to support them? The public needs more information about how tax dollars are being spent, especially when they are being distributed to some of the world’s largest companies, which happen to emit a lot of carbon while bringing in record profits.”

On Monday, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack is expected to announce a second round of awards in the climate-smart program, with an emphasis on small farming and ranching operations; reaching underserved producers; and carbon measuring, monitoring, reporting, and verification activities developed at minority-serving institutions.