Climate-Smart Agriculture

USDA Partnership for Climate-Smart Commodities grant program

As farmers confront the effects of climate change, a national movement toward climate-smart agriculture is underway. At Working Landscapes, we are helping farmers accelerate their transition thanks to a grant award from the USDA Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities.

Together with partner food hubs across North Carolina, we will offer financial and technical assistance to farmers to implement climate smart growing practices. The USDA’s stated goals for Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities like ours are to:

provide technical and financial assistance to producers to help them to implement climate-smart production practices on a voluntary basis on working lands
pilot innovative and cost-effective methods for quantification, monitoring, reporting, and verification of greenhouse gas benefits
develop markets and promote the resulting climate-smart commodities.

Our North Carolina food hubs already serve small farms, including farms led by women and people of color. Many of these farmers are already pursuing innovative methods in regenerative agriculture and food value chains. Food hubs already engage in marketing local harvests, so they are well prepared to promote and deliver climate-smart products to customers.

Small and underserved farms often need help in attaining their production and marketing goals, and food hubs have a track record of assisting farmers with food safety audits, grant applications, and marketing assistance. This project will build on food hubs’ role as multifaceted, locally-rooted institutions in the cultural, economic, and ecological development of a truly sustainable food system.