Climate Change: USDA's Ongoing Efforts Can Be Enhanced with Better Metrics and More Relevant Information for Farmers
Released: 2014-10-16T00:00:00

Letter

Background

The agricultural sector is a major part of the U.S. economy and has been and will continue to be affected by climate change, according to the Third National Climate Assessment. The assessment states that climate change will likely cause an increase in temperature, rainfall intensity, and extreme events in some areas, and extreme climate conditions, such as sustained droughts and heat waves. USDA plays an important role in addressing these potential impacts by using its resources to develop and implement both mitigation and adaptation measures.

The U.S Agricultural Sector

The U.S. agricultural sector accounted for $395 billion in sales in 2012, up 33 percent from 2007. According to USDA’s 2012 Census of Agriculture, of this $395 billion, about half is from sales of crops, and half is from livestock sales. Between 2007 and 2012, crop sales increased nearly 48 percent, while livestock sales increased about 19 percent. Thirteen states—California, Iowa, Texas, Nebraska, Minnesota, Kansas, Illinois, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Indiana, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Ohio—each had more than $10 billion in agricultural sales and together accounted for about 62 percent of all agriculture sales in 2012. California led the United States in agricultural sales in 2012, with about $43 billion, or 11 percent, of the total U.S. agricultural sales. In recent years, there has been a trend toward larger-scale farming operations. For example, according to a 2013 USDA Economic Research Service (ERS) report, between 1982 and 2007, for farms, the midpoint acreage for U.S. cropland nearly doubled, from about 590 acres to about 1,100 acres.

Three important crops in terms of acreage planted and sales in the United States are corn, soybeans, and wheat. In 2012, corn was harvested on more than 94 million acres, and total sales for corn were about $67 billion. Soybeans were harvested on more than 76 million acres, with sales of about $39 billion, while there were about 49 million acres of all wheat varieties, with sales of about $16 billion. Livestock sales represented nearly half of agricultural sales in 2012, with poultry, cattle, milk, and pigs the most sold commodities in this category. A breakdown of the agricultural sector’s 2012 sales is shown in figure 1.

The United States is also a global supplier of food. In 2012, the United States exported nearly $136 billion in agricultural products, or around 10 percent of total U.S. exports. The United States exports about 20 percent of the corn grown domestically, is the leading exporter of soybeans, and also is a leading exporter of wheat. In addition, the United States is the largest producer of beef and poultry in the world.

Climate Change Impacts on the Agricultural Sector

According to the Third National Climate Assessment, climate change is expected to increase disruptions to agriculture production in the future. Increases in temperature, rainfall intensity, and extreme events in some areas, and extreme climate conditions, such as sustained droughts and heat waves, will likely have negative impacts on crop and livestock yields. By the end of the century, the Third National Climate Assessment states that average U.S. temperatures will increase between 3°F and 10°F, and precipitation events will be more extreme, meaning that more rain will fall during these events. In addition, changing climate conditions also will likely affect the geographic distribution and severity of invasive pests, diseases, and weeds. Table 1 shows the projected impacts of climate change and how they could affect agricultural production in the United States.

Both climate mitigation and adaptation options exist in the agricultural sector. According to the Third National Climate Assessment, both of these efforts are required to minimize the damage inflicted by climate change in the United States and to adapt to the changes that already have occurred or that will occur.

The agricultural sector emits about 6 percent of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, but U.S. lands (mostly forestlands) sequester enough carbon to offset 12 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions. Sources of these emissions include fuel consumption, fertilizer that can emit nitrous oxide, and methane emissions from livestock. Farmers can take certain mitigation actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and sequester carbon. For example, farmers can use energy-efficient buildings, vehicles, or farm equipment that runs on renewable energy, rather than fossil fuels. In addition, farmers can implement mitigation measures, such as no-till farming and precision agriculture. According to a 2011 ERS report, adoption of precision agriculture can improve the efficiency of input use and reduce environmental harm from the overapplication of inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides, which can reduce nitrous oxide emissions. Through the digestive process, livestock emit a considerable amount of methane, a greenhouse gas; reducing these emissions is another mitigation strategy. According to USDA officials, work is being done to alter the diet of cattle and to improve manure management practices in an effort to reduce methane emissions.

Farmers also can improve the resiliency of their operations, as shown in table 2. For example, farmers can change the type of crop they plant to fit the changing climate or change the timing of their planting in response to a longer or shorter growing season. They can also shift to drought-, pest-, or weed-resistant crop varieties to reduce climate change impacts. There are also actions that address both mitigation and adaptation. For example, farmers can choose no-till farming, which allows carbon to remain in the soil and reduces fuel consumption (mitigation) while also improving the capacity of soil to retain moisture to reduce stress on crops during drought (adaptation).

USDA Agencies and Offices Involved in Climate Change

Several USDA agencies and offices are involved in climate change work. USDA’s Climate Change Program Office, which coordinates all of the department’s responses to climate change, leads a Global Change Task Force. The task force includes representatives from 20 USDA agencies and offices and works to coordinate climate activities by holding monthly meetings to discuss climate-related opportunities and efforts across the department. Table 3 provides information about the eight USDA agencies and offices that are most heavily involved in the agency’s climate change work.

In June 2011, the Secretary of Agriculture issued Departmental Regulation 1070-001 that required USDA agencies to take climate change into account when making long-term planning decisions and to The resulting USDA prepare climate adaptation plans by June 2012.adaptation plan contained individual adaptation plans for 12 of USDA’s agencies, lays out the risks and vulnerabilities facing agency missions as a result of climate change, and details the strategies for overcoming these vulnerabilities.

As required by GPRA as amended by the GPRA Modernization Act of 2010, executive agencies are to complete strategic plans in which they define their missions, establish results-oriented goals, and identify the strategies that will be needed to achieve those goals. According to USDA officials, beginning with its 2010-2015 Strategic Plan, USDA included climate change as a part of one of its four strategic goals. Specifically, the Strategic Plan states that USDA will ensure that farms are “conserved, restored, and made more resilient to climate change.” An objective of this strategic goal is to “lead efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change.” In April 2014, USDA released its 2014-2018 Strategic Plan that includes the same four strategic goals established in the 2010-2015 strategic plan plus one additional strategic goal.

The Cooperative Extension System

USDA partners with the cooperative extension system to, among other things, help deliver information to farmers on farm management practices. The cooperative extension system is a partnership between land-grant universities and USDA. Established by the Morrill Act of 1862, the land grant university system is comprised of more than 100 colleges and universities around the country. These institutions receive federal support and are required to provide relevant information to the public through the extension system. Faculty members at land-grant universities may have dual appointments, meaning that in addition to teaching, they spend a certain portion of their time on research and on extension work.

Established by the Smith-Lever Act of 1914, the cooperative extension system is a nationwide system used to disseminate information and research developed at land-grant universities. The system is a network of state and local offices that provide information to the public on a variety of topics, including agriculture. USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) distributes federal funding for the extension service. The extension service also receives state and county funding. According to a June 2013 joint USDA and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) report on the role of extension in climate adaptation, climate-related research and extension efforts have existed for decades.provide decision makers with information and tools, disseminated through meetings, written publications, and internet websites, to increase climate literacy.

USDA’s Climate Change Priorities Include Providing Better Information to Farmers and Generally Align with National Priorities

USDA’s climate change priorities include providing better information on future climate conditions to help farmers in their decision making, conducting research, and delivering decision support tools and technical assistance to farmers. USDA’s adaptation efforts focus on research and technical assistance, while its mitigation efforts also focus on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and sequestering carbon. USDA’s climate adaptation and mitigation priorities generally align with national climate priorities.

USDA’s Climate Change Priorities Include Providing Better Information on Future Climate Conditions to Farmers

USDA’s climate change priorities include providing better information to farmers on current and potential impacts of climate change, which is information that farmers need to make decisions. According to a USDA official, there is a need to develop better forecasts for upcoming growing seasons. These forecasts are generally 90-day forecasts, but farmers also need accurate forecasts for 6 to 8 months out, because they order their seeds for spring planting in the fall. Another USDA official we spoke with told us that there is a need to provide farmers with longer-term projections for as much as 20 to 60 years into the future that farmers can use to help make large capital investment decisions, such as whether to install an irrigation system or install a cooling system in a barn. A USDA official told us that USDA itself does not engage in climate modeling, but instead relies on some of the federal agencies with strong climate science capabilities, such as NOAA, the National Science Foundation, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, to help USDA officials better understand the climate projections that are available and the associated uncertainties for these projections. USDA officials told us that through the USGCRP, USDA has been encouraging these agencies to downscale modeling results so that they provide more localized and, hence, more helpful information to farmers. According to USDA’s 2014 Budget Explanatory Notes for Congress, “Access to consistent and detailed projections of climate change is a major area of uncertainty for our programs and agencies.”

USDA Climate Change Adaptation Efforts Focus on Research and Developing Technical Assistance

According to USDA’s 2010 Climate Change Science Plan, the agency’s adaptation efforts aim to improve the understanding of climate change impacts on agriculture, develop adaptation practices, and deliver science- based information and tools to stakeholders. USDA officials told us that about 80 percent of the agency’s climate research dollars are spent on climate change adaptation. A 2013 Congressional Research Service (CRS) report shows USDA’s funding for climate change research under USGCRP has almost doubled from $63 million in fiscal year 2008 to $121 million in fiscal year 2010, but funding has remained relatively flat since. In fiscal year 2013, total funding for USDA’s climate change research programs was about $82 million, as shown in table 4.data on federal climate expenditures, research represents approximately According to OMB 20 percent of USDA’s total climate change funding. According to USDA officials, USDA does not have a line item in its budget that covers climate change because many of the agency’s climate efforts involve programs across several USDA agencies. However, USDA does compile a “climate change crosscut,” which provides information on the money that various USDA agencies spent on climate change activities and provides this information to OMB. For more information on USDA’s climate change funding, see appendix II.

NIFA and the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) are the two USDA agencies with the largest amount of climate change research funding.

NIFA. NIFA oversees a competitive grant program called the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) that awards grants for research, extension, and/or education activities. Grant money is also awarded for “integrated” projects that incorporate two or more of these activities. Some integrated projects, known as coordinated agricultural projects (CAP), support large-scale projects that promote collaboration, open communication and the exchange of information, and reduce duplication of effort. In addition, NIFA funds “standard” grants on climate change adaptation and mitigation in agriculture that consist of targeted research, education, extension, or integrated projects.

To help communicate information to farmers, NIFA distributes funding to the cooperative extension system. Extension disseminates science-based information and decision support tools through meetings, written publications, and via the internet. For example, the cooperative extension system supports the eXtension website, which can be used to access information and education resources on a wide range of topics from land- grant university staff and experts, such as entrepreneurship and growing certain crops. In fiscal year 2013, NIFA provided approximately $296 million for agricultural extension at land-grant universities, or slightly less than one quarter of NIFA’s total budget, to supplement state and county funds for the extension system.

ARS. USDA’s principal in-house research agency, performs both basic and applied research and presents the results through various sources, including academic papers, fact sheets, and conference presentations. Climate change research conducted by ARS takes place under the National Resources and Sustainable Agricultural Systems program, one of its four national research programs. In fiscal year 2013, ARS spent about $38 million on climate change research, about 65 percent of which went to adaptation research projects, according to an internal USDA document. For example, ARS researchers are experimenting with different crop varieties to show which of these can withstand drought or higher temperatures.

ERS. ERS also devotes a smaller amount of research money to developing information for decision makers on climate policy, such as examining the costs and benefits of adapting to climate change. In 2012, ERS released a report that examined how farmers might adapt to changing climate conditions to reduce the impact of changes in local weather, resource conditions, and price signals. The study found that, while changing climate conditions are uncertain, farmers have the opportunity to adapt to weather, resource, and price changes by altering crops and adjusting their production practices.

USDA’s Climate Change Mitigation Efforts Focus on Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sequestering Carbon

In the area of climate change mitigation, USDA has set a goal for 2015 of a 40 million metric ton reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from the agricultural sector compared with 2005 levels and an 80 million metric ton increase in carbon sequestration compared with 2005. According to USDA’s 2010-2015 Strategic Plan, USDA will work to achieve these goals through its existing conservation and energy programs. Many of USDA’s conservation programs are administered by the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and provide both technical and financial assistance to farmers who voluntarily enroll in them. Under the Conservation Technical Assistance program, for example, NRCS staff work with farmers to develop and implement conservation plans. In addition, NRCS administers programs that provide financial assistance to encourage farmers to adopt conservation practices, such as the Conservation Stewardship Program. USDA’s Farm Service Agency (FSA) also administers conservation programs, such as the Conservation Reserve Program, which provides financial assistance to farmers who remove land from agricultural production and plant native vegetation on the land. USDA’s conservation programs account for about 4 percent of USDA’s budget—approximately $6.2 billion in fiscal year 2013—but the agency does not report this funding to OMB as spending directly related to climate change. USDA officials said they do not report the spending to OMB as climate-related because the environmental benefits of these programs are wide-ranging and not solely related to climate change. For example, these conservation programs can help reduce erosion from fields and provide habitat for wildlife, in addition to sequestering carbon and improving soil health.

USDA officials told us that the agency’s research efforts also play a role in promoting climate change mitigation, but these officials acknowledge that research alone does not directly result in emissions reductions. Several research efforts aim to quantify the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions that occurs if farmers take certain actions. For example, ARS has helped develop GRACEnet, a research program that estimates greenhouse gas emissions and carbon sequestration based on crops planted and land management practices. According to a USDA official, mitigation research represents about 15 percent of USDA’s total climate change research spending.

Another mitigation goal involves increasing renewable energy generation in rural communities. USDA has set a goal of more than doubling the amount of renewable energy generation in rural communities from 1.5 billion kilowatt hours in 2009 to 3.1 billion kilowatt hours in 2015. For example, Rural Development’s Rural Energy for America Program (REAP) supports small energy generation projects by providing financial assistance to farmers and rural business owners that institute renewable energy systems, conduct energy audits, and make energy efficiency improvements. According to OMB, REAP received about $3 million for these efforts in fiscal year 2013. In total, Rural Development received about $13 in fiscal year 2013 to support agency mitigation efforts, according to OMB.

USDA’s Climate Change Priorities for Agriculture Generally Align with National Climate Change Priorities

National climate change priorities, as articulated by the Administration and the USGCRP, are to promote mitigation actions, advance climate science, develop tools and translate information, better predict future climate conditions, and ensure that federal agencies are incorporating climate change into agency programs and operations. The Administration has set a goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent by 2020 from 2005 levels. National climate change priorities aimed at meeting economy-wide emissions targets and ensuring climate resiliency are addressed in documents including the President’s Climate Action Plan, the 2011 Progress Report of the Interagency Climate Change Adaptation Task Force, and Executive Orders 13514 and 13653. National climate change priorities are also identified in the 10-year USGCRP Research Plan. Table 5 shows climate-related priorities discussed in these documents.

USDA’s climate change priorities for agriculture generally align with the national priorities outlined in table 5. USDA officials said they rely on NOAA and other USGCRP science agencies to develop better and more localized climate projections to help farmers make management decisions to adapt to weather variability and a changing climate. USDA also has various adaptation and mitigation research efforts under way that are intended to help understand the current and potential impacts of climate change and develop information and tools for farmers. To help deliver information to farmers, USDA will rely on the cooperative extension system to translate climate information and NRCS staff to provide technical assistance through conservation programs, such as the Conservation Technical Assistance program. According to the USGCRP 2012-2021 Research Plan, USDA’s research and extension efforts, conservation programs, and efforts to provide farmers with decision- making tools support USGCRP priorities on “multiple fronts.”

USDA has also developed a climate change adaptation plan. In accordance with Executive Order 13514, USDA issued Departmental Regulation 1070-001 in June 2011, which directed its agencies to develop climate change adaptation plans. The June 2012 climate change adaptation plan detailed how climate change is anticipated to affect USDA operations and how USDA agencies will prepare and adapt to the projected impacts. For example, FSA stated that threats associated with climate change could make farmers become more reliant on financial and disaster assistance programs administered by FSA. To address this vulnerability, FSA’s strategy is to review existing policies and programs and determine if they could be modified to encourage farmers to undertake adaptation measures such as changing crop varieties, diversifying crops, and increasing water-use efficiency.

USDA Climate Change Efforts Consist of Both Mature Programs and New Initiatives, but the Agency Is Not Tracking Progress Adequately

USDA’s climate efforts consist of both mature programs and newer initiatives. USDA has been conducting climate change research and implementing conservation programs for several years. Many of these conservation programs were established prior to USDA’s more recent focus on climate change. In more recent years, USDA has emphasized the need to turn climate research into technical assistance for farmers. In addition, USDA is working with other agencies to improve climate projections. However, USDA is not using its performance planning or reporting process to provide information on how it intends to accomplish its strategic goal on climate change or to track its progress toward meeting this goal.

USDA Has Engaged in Climate Change Efforts for Several Years

USDA’s climate efforts have consisted of research, conservation, and energy programs.

Research: USDA has conducted climate change research since the early 1990s. These research efforts grew out of the Global Change Research Act of 1990, which required the development of a research plan that provides recommendations for collaboration to combine and interpret data to, among other things, “produce information readily usable by policymakers attempting to formulate effective strategies for preventing, mitigating, and adapting to the effects of global change.” Both ARS and NIFA and its predecessor organization at USDA, the Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service, have been involved in climate change research since the 1990s.

ARS and NIFA still play major roles in USDA’s climate research efforts. In fiscal year 2013, they accounted for $78 million of the $82 million (95 percent) of the monies that USDA spent on climate change research, according to OMB data. ARS accounted for $38 million in research spending, with most of this research conducted under its Climate Change, Soils, and Emissions Program. This program conducts research on four components of climate change: (1) improving air quality; (2) reducing greenhouse gas emissions and sequestering carbon; (3) enabling agriculture to adapt to climate change; and (4) enhancing soil health. According to an internal ARS document, there were 32 ongoing research projects in 2013 focused on climate mitigation at a cost of $13.7 million, and 53 research projects focused on climate adaptation at a cost of $24.6 million. NIFA’s work on climate change is done through its Institute of Bioenergy, Climate, and the Environment and, in fiscal year 2013, NIFA accounted for about $40 million of USDA’s climate research spending. According to NIFA officials, most of NIFA’s climate research is funded through AFRI, the largest competitive grants program that NIFA administers. One of the five challenge areas that AFRI is working on is to “mitigate and adapt to climate change.”

Conservation: USDA also has several established conservation programs administered by FSA and NRCS, many of which were established prior to USDA’s more recent focus on climate change. Now these conservation programs are being presented as not only helping to conserve land, prevent erosion, or provide wildlife habitat, but also as having the climate benefit of sequestering carbon and promoting soil health. For example, FSA, and its predecessor agency, have administered the Conservation Reserve Program since 1986 and, in fiscal year 2013, about 27 million acres of land were conserved through this program. FSA estimates that this effort results in a net reduction of 45 million metric tons of carbon dioxide annually through sequestration of carbon dioxide and reduced fuel and fertilizer use by farmers. Similarly, NRCS oversees a number of conservation programs, and an estimated 52.9 million acres were enrolled in these programs in fiscal year 2012. NRCS’s focus on conservation goes back to the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.Environmental Quality Incentives Program, which provides financial and technical assistance to farmers who implement conservation practices and undertake conservation planning.

The largest of NRCS’s conservation programs is the Energy: Another area where USDA has ongoing climate change mitigation efforts involves energy. FSA, NIFA, NRCS, and Rural Development have programs focusing on different aspects of energy, including energy efficiency, renewable energy, and the production of biofuels. Among these programs is Rural Development’s REAP program. According to a March 2012 report on REAP, this program funded 5,733 renewable energy and energy-efficiency improvement projects since 2009.

Recent USDA Efforts Have Emphasized the Need to Turn Research Findings Into Technical Assistance for Farmers

In 2009, research program leaders at NIFA developed a new strategic direction, which called for NIFA to support the creation of “innovative tools for communication and education to provide information that people and communities can use in their daily lives.” Subsequently, USDA’s Climate Change Science Plan, released in 2010, emphasized the need for the agency to develop tools to help farmers with both climate adaptation and mitigation. Also, in 2010, NIFA issued a funding announcement under AFRI’s climate change challenge area for projects focused on climate research, education, or extension. The announcement also provided funding for integrated projects, which combine research along with education and/or extension activities. Among the projects funded under this announcement were the four largest grants the agency had ever awarded according to NIFA officials. NIFA provided $85 million in total funding over a period of 5 years for these four integrated projects, known as CAP grants. Each of these grants, now in their fourth year, involves researchers across several universities. Table 6 provides more information on these projects.

The four CAP grant projects are at various stages of turning research into technical assistance for farmers, based on our review of materials and conversations with leaders of these projects. Most of the grantees had conducted outreach to farmers through conducting surveys or holding webinars, but the grants varied in terms of their use of extension and development of web-based tools to aid farmers in decision making. For example, the Sustainable Corn CAP grant has cooperative extension agents in nine Midwestern states in the Corn Belt who are responsible for disseminating project information to farmers. This CAP grant recipient also has partnered with another USDA grantee, Useful to Usable, to communicate research to farmers; this joint effort has resulted in the development of two web-based tools for farmers. One of these tools, the Corn-Growing Degree Day tool, compares current weather conditions with 30-year averages and helps farmers decide when to plant their seeds. In contrast, university officials leading the PINEMAP and REACCH CAP grants say their projects have been more focused on research so far, but they are planning to produce tools for farmers in the final years of funding. These university officials said that developing tools for farmers takes time.

In 2013, NIFA awarded two CAP grants focused on livestock, with one focused on dairy cattle, and one focused on beef cattle. These also were 5-year grants, consisting of about $10 million each. These livestock grants focus on developing information for farmers on adaptation and mitigation options. For example, the CAP grant project on beef cattle is examining ways to reduce methane emissions by altering the animals’ diets. NIFA officials told us it was likely that when funding ran out for these CAP grants and the four awarded in 2011, that future CAP grant funding would be less.

A senior ARS official told us that ARS’s research on climate mitigation is more mature than its climate adaptation efforts. This official said ARS was more comfortable with making recommendations to farmers about how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions or sequester carbon in soil than with providing information on how to adapt to climate change. He said that ARS’s adaptation research had not progressed to the point where a “decision tree” tool could be developed to guide farmers on adaptation options. During our site visits to two ARS laboratories, we observed growth chambers where ARS scientists were examining the impacts that future climate conditions could have on crops to help identify crop types that best withstand these conditions. One area where ARS has made progress is on soil health techniques, such as using no-till farming. According to ARS and NRCS officials, ARS research has been used by NRCS to provide information to farmers on the benefits of healthy soil.

Like ARS, NRCS has also developed some climate change tools for farmers in recent years. For example, NRCS has worked with Colorado State University to develop COMET-FARM, a web-based tool used by farmers to estimate the carbon footprint of their operations and to determine likely impacts from certain actions in reducing their greenhouse gas emissions or increasing sequestration. In 2012, NRCS launched a campaign called Unlock the Secrets in the Soil to share information with farmers on the benefits of healthy and productive soil. As part of this effort, NRCS maintains a website with fact sheets, videos, and other information on soil health.

In February 2014, USDA announced the establishment of seven regional climate hubs and three subsidiary hubs to “deliver science-based, practical information to farmers, ranchers” and “to support decision making related to mitigation of, and adaptation to climate change.” Figure 2 is an interactive map showing the regional climate hub locations. (See app. IV for a printable, noninteractive version of fig. 2.) During the first year of this effort, USDA officials expect the hubs to engage with stakeholders, establish a website, conduct a climate risk assessment for the hub’s region, and develop training for USDA staff. Several USDA agencies will actively contribute to this effort, including ARS, NRCS, Rural Development, and the Forest Service. USDA officials said they expect NRCS staff and the cooperative extension service to help distribute technical assistance from the hubs to farmers and other stakeholders in the region. The climate hubs will also collaborate with other federal agencies that have existing climate offices, such as NOAA, which has regional climate partnerships that include Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessments teams, Regional Climate Centers, and Regional Climate Services Directors. These hubs will be located at existing ARS or Forest Service facilities.

Interactive GraphicFigure 2: Location of USDA’s Regional Climate Hubs and Information on These RegionsInstructions: Move your cursor over the colored regions below for more information. For a printable, noninteractive version of this figure, see appendix IV.

Some USDA officials said that there was no substitute for the one-on-one attention that farmers receive from extension or NRCS staff. However, representatives from farm groups said that the cooperative extension system is “not what it used to be” because both funding and staffing levels have fallen in recent years. During our site visit to Iowa, a leading agricultural state in crop and livestock production, a university official told us that, until 2009, there had been an agricultural extension agent in each of the 99 county extension offices, but there now are only about 30 such individuals, each of whom covers multiple counties. According to USDA officials leading the climate hubs effort, they have reached out to the extension system by hosting a meeting with all of the land-grant universities and sending a letter to states, urging them to take part in the climate hub effort. USDA is also developing a memorandum of understanding on this topic with the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities. However, there are very few extension specialists that have a focus on climate change; we spoke to two climate change extension specialists during our work, and one of these specialists told us that he knew of only four such specialists in the United States. NRCS officials said that they viewed the staff’s work in the hubs as an extension of NRCS’ traditional work on conservation. These officials did, however, acknowledge that there has been a decline in staffing levels in recent years, which we reported on in a recent report.

With the reduced presence of the extension system, some stakeholders told us that farmers are turning more to the private sector for information on managing their farms. Certified crop advisers, who provide information to farmers on, among other things, seed selection, irrigation, and fertilizer decisions, are one such source of information. The Useful to Usable grant project is focused on delivering information to crop advisers that can be shared with farmers. Some of these crop advisers are independent, while others are employed by large agribusiness companies.

Efforts Are Under Way to Improve Climate Change Projections, but They Are Generally at an Early Stage

One of the key pieces of information farmers need to make planting and other decisions is reliable information on future climate projections. USDA officials told us that farmers need projections that cover longer periods of time so they can make longer-range and seasonal decisions, such as what type of seed to buy for the upcoming planting season or whether to purchase a certain piece of equipment. One of the ways that USDA and NOAA are addressing the need for longer-term climate projections is through participation in the Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project (AgMIP) consortium, an international effort established in 2010 to examine and improve globally integrated climate, economic, and agricultural production models. A USDA official involved in this effort told us that the AgMIP effort is at an early stage of development. Currently, most climate models provide projections over large geographical regions. For example, the Third National Climate Assessment provided information on possible future climate conditions across nine regions in the United States under different greenhouse gas emissions scenarios. However, NOAA officials said that these were scenarios and not forecasts because they do not include probabilities of these occurring. Officials at USDA told us that they recognize farmers need both localized information to make decisions and more information on the likelihood that certain climate conditions will occur. The process of refining larger-scale model results and arriving at a more local geographic scale is known as downscaling. According to the National Research Council, downscaling can be challenging, and additional evaluation of the various downscaling methodologies is needed.

Currently, farmers can obtain more localized projections on weather and drought conditions with shorter time frames from various sources. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center produces seasonal weather outlooks that cover 90-day periods for both temperature and precipitation and provide probabilities on whether conditions will be average, below average, or above average. NOAA also leads the National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS), which provides information on current drought conditions and projections for future drought conditions and communicates these on a regular basis. NIDIS is made up of representatives from USDA, along with the Departments of Energy, the Interior, and Transportation, and various other federal agencies.

USDA Is Not Using Its Strategic Planning and Reporting Process to Provide Information on Its Climate Change Efforts

Helping to make farms more resilient to climate change is part of one of USDA’s four strategic goals, but the agency is not using its performance planning and reporting process to provide information on how it intends to accomplish this goal or the status of its efforts. Developing a strategic plan and establishing performance measures is the first step in an agency’s performance management process. According to GPRA, as amended by the GPRA Modernization Act of 2010, an agency’s performance plan is supposed to explain how the agency will accomplish its performance goals, and its performance reports are supposed to review the extent to which performance goals have been met, and if the performance goals are not met, explain why. We found shortcomings in both of these documents that USDA had been preparing on an annual basis:

Performance plans. In USDA’s performance plans for the years 2011, 2012, and 2013, there was only general information about its climate change efforts, and there was no specific linkage between these efforts and its performance goals and how these efforts would be used to accomplish its goals. For example, in the 2013 USDA performance plan, there is no explicit discussion on how ARS’s or NIFA’s research efforts relate to climate change. When asked, USDA officials were uncertain as to why this linkage was not included in the department’s performance plan. GPRA requires that agencies use their performance plans to describe how an agency’s performance goals contribute to the goals laid out in its strategic plan. Without this information in its performance plans, USDA is not providing a plan to the public on how it intends to accomplish its goals.

Performance reports. In its performance reports for the years 2011, 2012, and 2013, USDA did not provide any information on whether it was meeting its performance goals under its strategic objective to lead efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change. USDA provided information on its other measures for its strategic objectives. USDA officials stated that since climate efforts were largely excluded from the performance plan, these efforts were excluded in the performance report. GPRA requires that agencies use their performance reports to provide information on whether they have achieved their performance goals. Without this information, USDA cannot demonstrate whether its efforts have been successful and whether changes need to be made to its programs to address any unmet goals.

Performance measures. USDA does not have performance measures in its 2014-2018 strategic plan for some of the adaptation practices, such as no-till farming and the planting of cover crops, which the agency is encouraging farmers to adopt. USDA officials in both ARS and NIFA told us that it is difficult for them to track farm management practices. However, USDA conducts several surveys of farmers, and its Agricultural Resource Management Survey collects information on farm management practices, including the use of no-till farming. Agency officials also said that it has been difficult to develop performance measures for climate change since it was first included as a strategic goal in the 2010-2015 strategic plan. Nonetheless, USDA has developed performance measures to track progress for some of its other strategic objectives that track acreage amounts where certain practices have been implemented on public or private lands. USDA has a wide-ranging set of climate efforts under way, but the performance measures that are part of its strategic plan do not capture the breadth of its efforts. Without measures to track progress on more of its climate efforts, USDA will not be able to fully assess its progress in meeting its climate change strategic goal and provide information to Congress and the public on its progress. See appendix III for more information on the strategic goal, objectives, and associated performance measures that are part of USDA’s strategic plans for fiscal years 2010-2015 and fiscal years 2014-2018.

USDA Faces Challenges in Implementing Its Climate Change Efforts

USDA faces challenges in encouraging U.S. farmers to take measures to mitigate and adapt to climate change. To address some of these challenges, USDA is, among other things, developing tools that summarize climate information and communicate research findings to farmers. However, USDA does not provide farmers with information on the costs and returns of taking climate change actions.

USDA Faces Challenges in Encouraging Farmers to Adapt to Climate Change and Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sequester Carbon

As mentioned earlier, USDA is developing and delivering technical assistance on climate change to farmers, and we found that the agency faces challenges in these efforts. USDA officials we spoke with, as well as researchers and representatives of environmental groups, said that climate change is a very complex topic, and it is difficult to turn the large amount of often technical research into readily understandable information. Our 2009 report on climate change found that turning climate data into information useful for making climate adaptation decisions was a challenge facing federal, state, and local decision makers.

USDA officials acknowledge a need to develop climate projections at geographic scales and time frames relevant to farmers. To accomplish this goal, USDA officials said they must rely on other agencies and researchers, such as NOAA, because USDA does not have the technical capability to do this work. NOAA officials told us that providing climate predictions covering a 5- to 10-year period is one of the largest unmet needs in climate forecasting. Currently, it is difficult for climate modelers to predict when certain key climate features will occur that can have major influences on the climate on these time frames, such as El Niño/Southern Oscillation events.NOAA is seeking to extend its climate forecasts beyond one year. NOAA officials also told us that climate models will always involve a degree of uncertainty and that local cooperative extension staff need to be trained on how to present information about this uncertainty in the models.

However, to provide additional help to farmers, Another challenge USDA faces is the incentive structure that farmers consider when making decisions. Officials at USDA, researchers, and farmers we spoke with told us that farmers need incentives to take climate adaptation or mitigation actions. For example, planting cover crops has a financial cost for the farmer in the short-term in the form of seed and planting costs, but the benefits of healthier soil may not be realized for a few years. Similarly, an acre of land that is maintained in perennial vegetative cover for conservation purposes is not available to a farmer for revenue-generating crops, such as corn or soybeans. USDA’s existing conservation programs provide payments to farmers who take such conservation actions, but these payments are generally less than the revenue the farmer would receive from growing and selling crops on the land. Total acreage placed in the Conservation Reserve Program has declined between 2007 and 2013 from about 37 million acres to about 27 million acres, and one USDA official told us this was due in part to higher market prices for corn. Also, farmers who have marginal farmland have been able to convert it from grassland—which provides conservation benefits and sequesters carbon—to revenue-generating crops and qualify for crop insurance coverage offered by USDA, thus lowering their financial risk. As some Iowa farmers told us, farmers generally make decisions based on short-term economic incentives because the farming industry is focused on producing commodities at the lowest price. For example, if climate change measurably decreases yields for farmers in the future, farmers may have an incentive to change their practices.

There was also general agreement among university researchers that climate change can be a polarizing topic in the agriculture community. According to a USDA-funded survey of almost 4,800 farmers in the Corn Belt, 66 percent believed that climate change was occurring and, of these respondents, 41 percent believed that humans were at least partly responsible. The authors of this research found that if farmers do not believe climate change is happening or poses a threat, they may be less likely to take adaptation or mitigation actions.

USDA Has Taken Steps to Address Challenges but Does Not Provide Farmers with Information on the Costs and Returns of Taking Climate Change Actions

USDA has taken several steps to address the challenges it faces. For example, it is working to improve the information that can be provided to farmers from climate models. USDA is also taking steps to deliver information to farmers that is more accessible and easier to understand and apply to their operations. According to USDA officials, the regional climate hubs are intended to provide an avenue to deliver region-specific information to farmers on climate change. In addition, in three of the large CAP grant projects that USDA funded in 2011, farmers have been surveyed or interviewed to get more information on their needs and to better tailor the information provided to them to their needs. An official with the Useful to Usable CAP grant project told us that the project has used focus groups to gather information on the types of information that the farm community needs on climate change. Another USDA project maintains a website called AgroClimate, with weather forecast links and other tools, including fact sheets on different farm management practices, such as planting cover crops. University researchers we spoke with said that an understanding of the farm community is critical in communicating with farmers about climate change.

USDA reports have highlighted the importance of providing information to farmers on the costs and returns of taking certain actions in response to climate change. For example, USDA Technical Bulletin 1935 states that there is a need for “risk-weighted” costs and benefits of taking adaptation actions, but “few efforts have been made to develop such comprehensive quantification efforts in the context of climate change.”officials at USDA, researchers, and farmers we spoke with, this According to information is important because farmers weigh the financial costs and returns when making decisions about their farm operations. When we asked USDA officials about the agency’s efforts to develop this information, they highlighted a 2013 report that examined the financial incentives necessary for farmers to adopt certain mitigation practices. For example, the report provides estimated changes in costs, yield, and revenue for farmers changing from conventional tillage to reduced tillage for certain crops including corn and wheat. However, we found that the report does not provide information on instances where crop yields increased as a result of changes in practices, and we did not find evidence of USDA efforts to make information in this 270-page technical report more accessible to farmers. NRCS officials we spoke with did not seem aware of the report, and the website for NRCS’s soil health campaign provides general information on the benefits of healthy soil but not on the farm-level costs to farmers or the demonstrated impact on crop yields from having healthier soil. According to federal standards for internal control, federal agencies are to record and communicate to management and others who need it and in a form and within a time frame that enables them to carry out their responsibilities. Also under these standards, in addition to internal communications, management should ensure that there are adequate means of communicating with, and obtaining information from, external stakeholders that may have a significant impact on the agency achieving its goals. NRCS officials said they did not have information on the costs and returns of taking certain actions in response to climate change and suggested that farmers might get it from other farmers. They noted that this information is challenging to develop because several variables can affect the costs and returns for a particular farmer. In keeping with Technical Bulletin 1935, USDA has taken some steps to develop estimates of costs and benefits of taking actions in response to climate change, but if this information is not distributed in an accessible format, its usefulness to farmers may be limited. Without information that is readily accessible to farmers on the farm-level economic costs and returns of taking certain actions in response to climate change, farmers may be reluctant to take climate adaptation or mitigation actions.

Conclusions

USDA is taking several promising steps to begin to help farmers mitigate and adapt to climate change. In recent years, USDA has increased funding for its climate efforts, particularly in the area of research, and has been working to help develop tools and useful information for farmers such as the recent establishment of regional climate hubs.

The importance of climate change at USDA is reflected in the fact that one of the agency’s four strategic goals focuses on climate change. However, the agency does not have associated performance measures that reflect the breadth of USDA efforts in the climate area. In addition, its performance plans and performance reports do not provide adequate information on how the agency planned to accomplish its goals or the status of its efforts. By not using its performance plans to explain how it will accomplish its goals in the area of climate change, USDA has not provided Congress and the public with important information on its efforts. Without a more robust performance measurement system, USDA will have difficulty assessing its progress in meeting its strategic goal on climate change and providing information to Congress and the public on the status of its efforts.

Farmers weigh the financial costs and returns of taking certain actions carefully. However, USDA has made few efforts to quantify the costs and returns of taking certain actions that could help farmers make both short- and long-term decisions in the face of a changing climate. USDA has taken some steps in this area, but without communicating more accessible information on the economic costs and returns to farmers of taking certain adaptation or mitigation actions on their farms consistent with federal internal control standards, farmers may be reluctant to take certain actions.

Recommendations for Executive Action

To better promote agency accountability, we recommend that the Secretary of Agriculture direct the Climate Change Program Office and the Office of Budget and Program Analysis to take the following three actions:

Work with relevant USDA agencies to develop performance measures that better reflect the breadth of USDA’s climate change efforts.

Ensure that the department’s annual performance plans explain how agency actions will lead to the accomplishment of performance goals in the area of climate change.

Use annual performance reports to provide information on the status of agency efforts toward meeting its performance measures in the area of climate change.

In addition, to provide relevant information to farmers, we recommend that the Secretary of Agriculture direct the Climate Change Program Office to work with relevant USDA agencies to develop and provide readily accessible information to farmers on the farm-level economic costs and returns of taking certain actions in response to climate change.

Agency Comments and Our Evaluation

We provided a draft of this report to the Departments of Agriculture and Commerce for review and comment. We also provided a copy to the U.S. Global Change Research Program for a technical review. In its written comments, reproduced in appendix V, the Department of Agriculture agreed with our recommendations and said that the report reflects the wide range of actions that the department is taking to address climate change in the agriculture sector. USDA also noted it has begun to address some of these recommendations. Specifically, the department is conducting additional work to provide tools to farmers that assess the costs and impacts of adopting technologies that help to mitigate climate change. The Departments of Agriculture and Commerce and the U.S. Global Change Research Program also provided technical comments, which we have incorporated as appropriate.

As agreed with your office, unless you publicly announce the contents of this report earlier, we plan no further distribution until 14 days from the report date. At that time, we will send copies of this report to the appropriate congressional committees, the Secretary of Agriculture, the Secretary of Commerce, and other interested parties. In addition, the report is available at no charge on the GAO website at http://www.gao.gov.

If you or your staff have any questions about this report, please contact me at (202) 512-3841 or neumannj@gao.gov. Contact points for our Offices of Congressional Relations and Public Affairs may be found on the last page of this report. GAO staff who made major contributions to this report are listed in appendix VI.

Appendix I: Objectives, Scope, and Methodology

Our objectives were to examine (1) U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) priorities related to climate change and agricultural production and how these align with national priorities; (2) the status of USDA’s climate change efforts; and (3) the challenges, if any, USDA faces in implementing its climate efforts and the steps it has taken to overcome these challenges.

To describe USDA’s priorities related to climate change and agricultural production and how these align with national priorities, we analyzed USDA documents that describe the agency’s priorities in this area. These documents include USDA’s fiscal year 2010–2015 and fiscal year 2014- 2018 Strategic Plans, the agency’s Climate Change Adaptation Plan, its Climate Change Science Plan, and Departmental Regulation 1070-001. To identify national priorities regarding climate change and agricultural production, we analyzed the U.S. Global Change Research Program 10- year strategic research plan, the Interagency Climate Change Task Force 2010 and 2011 progress reports, Executive Orders 13514 and 13653, and the President’s Climate Action Plan. We also analyzed budget data that USDA reports to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for its annual report to Congress on climate change expenditures. We also interviewed officials responsible for climate change policy from USDA’s Climate Change Program Office and other USDA agencies.

To determine the status of USDA’s climate change efforts, we analyzed documents that included annual budget data, progress reports, and annual performance reports. These included the budget data that USDA reports to OMB. We focused on USDA’s key climate change efforts, which we identified through discussions with USDA officials and by examining budget information, which enabled us to determine where USDA was devoting large amounts of funding. We also reviewed USDA’s strategic plans for fiscal years 2010-2015 and fiscal years 2014-2018 and the performance plans and performance reports for the years 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013. We also examined the requirements under the Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) of 1993 and the GPRA Modernization Act of 2010 for strategic plans, performance plans, and performance reports. In addition, we reviewed progress reports that had been prepared by various USDA agencies. For the six large Coordinated Agriculture Project grants that had been funded by USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), we interviewed officials that were leading these grants and USDA officials that were responsible for overseeing five of these grants. We also interviewed officials that were leading two standard grants that had been funded by NIFA.

To determine the challenges that USDA faces in implementing its climate efforts and steps it has taken to overcome some of these challenges, we reviewed key documents on USDA’s efforts and reviewed our past work on climate change. These USDA documents included USDA’s Technical Bulletin 1935 on climate change and various reports prepared by USDA agencies. Our past work on climate change has identified several potential challenges in implementing climate change efforts at the federal and local level.

For all three objectives, we conducted interviews with a range of officials, including USDA officials implementing climate programs, and stakeholders who were knowledgeable about USDA’s efforts and the challenges the agency faces. Specifically, we spoke with officials from 10 USDA agencies and had multiple conversations with officials from the following USDA agencies because of their extensive involvement in climate change work: Agricultural Research Service (ARS), Economic Research Service, Farm Service Agency (FSA), NIFA, Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), and Rural Development. We also spoke multiple times with officials from USDA’s Climate Change Program Office, which is responsible for coordinating USDA’s climate efforts, and USDA’s Office of Budget and Policy Analysis, which is responsible for USDA’s preparation of budget estimates, legislative reports, and regulations, as well as USDA’s strategic planning and reporting efforts. The stakeholders we spoke with included officials from farm groups, environmental groups, and an agribusiness company. We also spoke with farmers from Iowa and Kentucky.

Finally, we conducted two site visits on this engagement. We visited ARS’s Beltsville Agricultural Research Center in Maryland, where we met with ARS researchers that were examining the impacts that different climate conditions could have on crops. We also toured the facilities where this research is taking place. We conducted a site visit in Iowa, where we spoke with a variety of officials, including USDA officials from ARS, NRCS, FSA, and Rural Development. We also spoke with a variety of officials at Iowa State University, including professors and extension staff. In addition, we met with extension staff in a county office, visited a corn and pig farm, and spoke with farmers that operated this farm. We selected Iowa because it is a large agriculture producer; according to the 2012 National Census of Agriculture, Iowa was the largest producer of corn and soybeans in the United States.

We conducted this performance audit from September 2013 to September 2014 in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards. Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain sufficient, appropriate evidence to provide a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. We believe that the evidence obtained provides a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives.

Appendix II: Summary of USDA Climate Change Budget and Associated Programs

This appendix presents information on the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) budget and programs that are related to climate change. According to USDA officials, USDA does not have a line item in its budget that covers climate change because many of the agency’s climate efforts involve programs across several USDA agencies. However, USDA does compile a “climate change crosscut,” which provides information on the money that various USDA agencies spent on climate change activities. For the purposes of this report, we used budget data that USDA reports to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for its annual report to Congress on climate expenditures. Table 7 below is a summary of the amount these agencies spent on climate change efforts, according to OMB, along with a summary of USDA programs associated with this spending.

Appendix III: Information on USDA’s Strategic Objectives and Performance Goals

In this appendix, table 8 provides information on the objectives and performance measures related to climate change that are part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) fiscal years (FY) 2010-2015 and 2014-2018 strategic plans. These underlie USDA’s second strategic goal to “ensure our national forests and private working lands are conserved, restored, and made more resilient to climate change, while enhancing our water resources.” Working lands include both farms and livestock operations.

Appendix IV: Information on USDA’s Regional Climate Hubs (Corresponds to Fig. 2)

Appendix IV: Information on USDA’s Regional Climate Hubs (Corresponds to Fig. 2)

In this appendix, table 9 provides additional details on the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) regional climate hubs that are part of the rollover information contained in interactive figure 2.

Appendix V: Comments from Department of Agriculture

Appendix VI: GAO Contact and Staff Acknowledgments

GAO Contact

Staff Acknowledgments

In addition to the individual named above, Anne K. Johnson (Assistant Director), Cheryl Arvidson, Thomas Beall, Carol Bray, Kevin Bray, Christine Broderick, Andrew Burton, Frederick K. Childers, Elizabeth Curda, Scott Heacock, Richard P. Johnson, Leah Marshall, Susan Offutt, Dan Royer, and Sarah Veale made key contributions to this report.