Frequently Asked Questions

RIPE is proposing that ag producers earn in the range of $100-$300 per acre or animal unit for voluntary stewardship practices such as cover crops, manure separation, or managed grazing.

The level of available funding that could be available to farmers and ranchers through a climate policy depends on several factors. RIPE analyzed multiple scenarios and believes that with growers’ advocacy, it is feasible to secure an annual fund for sustainable agriculture in the range of $38 billion a year. This would allow a medium-sized producer who chooses to participate in the program and invest in stewardship practices to earn in the range of $38,000 a year. Each participating grower will be ensured a payment level that includes three parts: Carbon Compensation, Stewardship Reimbursement, and Stewardship Incentive.

As an example, let us assume a carbon price of $50 per ton. Participating corn growers would receive three payments. First, there is a Carbon Compensation of $34 per acre, equal to the increased cost of inputs such as fertilizer and fuel. Second, a producer who is implementing cover crops would receive a Practice Reimbursement of $38 per acre, or the full average cost of the practice. Third, there is a Stewardship Incentive based on ecosystem service values totaling $108 per acre. A corn farmer with 450 acres would therefore receive a total annual payment between $32,400 and $48,600.

We look forward to sharing more about our calculations with interested stakeholders.

There are many great aspects to existing USDA conservation programs, and RIPE seeks to draw upon most of the existing elements, such as stewardship practice protocols and farmer self-verification. However, none of the working land programs are sufficient to achieve the goals outlined in this white paper, because they do not compensate at levels that reflect the public benefits delivered, and the rates do not even fully compensate the expenses farmers incur from practice adoption and opportunity loss.

The USDA Environmental Quality Incentive Program (EQIP) provides payments for working land stewardship practice adoption that are based on implementation costs, not value of public benefits. EQIP payments rarely cover the full cost of implementation nor the costs associated with foregone income and maintenance. The Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP) is another USDA conservation program that has helped advance conservation on farm, forest, and ranch lands across the U.S. RIPE follows the CSP precedent of compensating early actors for their environmental outcomes. However, CSP has an administratively complex enrollment process that prevents many farmers, especially small farmers who do not have spare capacity to work on complex forms, from participating. It also has payment limitations that are restrictive for large farms preventing them from enrolling most of their operations and therefore preventing larger environmental impacts. CSP selects participants with a ranking system that favors farmers who have already adopted conservation practices, which would make it less equitable for the 80% of farmers who have not yet adopted conservation practices.

RIPE100 is a new conservation program that fully compensates farmers, provides them with profitable compensation reflecting the environmental benefits they deliver, and allows for simplified enrollment of many more farms. RIPE’s proposal replicates many parts of existing conservation programs, including the set of existing protocols for practices and USDA technical expertise, to avoid unnecessary administrative costs.

Given the rapid pace that President Biden’s Administration and Congress are moving to roll out a wide range of climate-related programs and policies, there is a significant opportunity to advance the RIPE100 concept within a wide range of funding vehicles in early 2021. Monies should come from new or unallocated funds as not to jeopardize existing programs that deliver valuable services. This program is designed to scale up easily. Funding for Phase 1 of the program could come from any combination of the following:

1. Unallocated funds from existing Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) authority;
2. Funds from expanded CCC authority;
3. Economic stimulus legislation, including but not limited to a COVID-19 recovery bill or an infrastructure investment package;
4. The annual Agriculture appropriations bill or other vehicle used to fund the federal government;
5. Comprehensive climate legislation; or
6. Other agricultural, climate, or finance bills that seek to include this policy concept.

Funding for Phase 2 of the program could come from a comprehensive climate legislative package or any of the any of the above vehicles, aside from the one-time recovery bills.

The cost of a climate policy on agricultural inputs plus the cost of stewardship practice adoption will total around $67/acre for many producers. Carbon farming payments will only deliver around $17/acre to growers (at a carbon price of $50/ton), leaving producers with a net loss. However, farmers and ranchers who adopt stewardship practices are delivering public benefits around $100-$300/acre when stacking the ecosystem services such as soil health, climate, water quality, biodiversity, and more.

RIPE advocates for allowing producers to earn the stacked ecosystem service value of their voluntary practices, delivering value to the public and the grower.

Across the biggest commodities in the U.S. agricultural economy, the average cost of a climate policy would be $52 per acre. When looking across the spectrum of carbon farming practices, the average value is around $48 per acre, leaving most growers with a net loss. But that includes practices that most producers would likely not implement, such as biochar. If we only include practices that are popular with producers, then the average per-acre payment drops to $12. For most farmers and ranchers, the math of carbon farming payments alone simply doesn’t work.

RIPE is supportive of the great contributions provided by IndigoAG, Ecosystem Services Marketplace Consortium (ESMC), and other private market organizers for environmental markets. We have established through engagement with industry and technical experts that there is no technical conflict between the RIPE proposal and private markets. RIPE100 complements these markets by allowing farmers to retain their environmental assets and sell them to private actors. RIPE both builds on the work of the private market and differs in the following ways:

1. Guaranteed & Larger Scale. It is widely agreed upon that the private market demand for environmental services such as carbon sequestration or water quality is significantly lower than the supply that farmers would like to deliver, if fairly compensated. RIPE100 is a USDA program that guarantees payment for all participating farmers at a much larger scale. Since the public benefits from significant environmental benefits of sustainable agriculture, it warrants internalizing these values in the market system that farmers can benefit from. The scale of funding available for farmers from a national climate bill designed with RIPE Roadmap principles is in the range of $40 billion/year.
2. Guaranteed Price. Private markets fluctuate payment terms based on buyers’ interests, while RIPE’s proposed USDA program would ensure payment levels upfront.
3.  No Expensive or Intrusive Farm-Level Monitoring. Scientific evidence of impact will be evaluated at the program level, not the farm level. Since RIPE is not proposing an environmental trading program, there is no need to demonstrate the level of farm-specific impacts that have required costly and invasive monitoring.
4. Near-term Opportunities using Existing Protocols. ESMC is developing sophisticated science that will be tremendously helpful to the wider field, and it will take many years to refine.  RIPE proposes payments be made immediately based on the known program-wide impacts. As more research is made available through ESMC and others, it will likely inform payment level adjustments.
5. Larger Payments. IndigoAg and other carbon farming actors are paying farmers for the greenhouse gas value alone, while RIPE proposes that payments include the values from greenhouse gas and water quality, biodiversity, soil health, and other ecosystem services.
6. No Penalty for Early Actors. Markets that trade environmental services must be sensitive to the need to prove “additionality”, i.e. additional environmental benefits secured due to the payment.  RIPE’s program is not an environmental trading system and can pay farmers for the outcomes they are delivering.  No penalty for early actors who are already investing in environmental benefits.

Several major agricultural trade groups have recently launched coalitions that are dedicated to evaluating various climate policy proposals and advancing a climate policy that is in the best interest of agriculture. The main differences between RIPE and most of those groups are that RIPE:

• Has a specific policy design outline (i.e. pay for stacked ecosystem services at a level that aligns with the farmers’ carbon compensation, practice reimbursement, and stewardship incentive).
• Is dedicated to the farmer profitability principle (i.e. farmers must earn a profitable stewardship incentive from a climate policy in contrast to the cost-share model of carbon farming or conservation payments)
  

We believe most other ag-climate groups will be interested in adopting this type of approach, and we invite collaboration.  RIPE looks forward to engaging coalition members and other interested stakeholders with detailed briefings of the Roadmap for their consideration. If your trade group is part of a coalition and would like a briefing to learn more, please contact us.

For more information about how RIPE compares to other organizations and policies relating to ag and climate, please visit our Resource Page for Organizational and Policy Landscape.

U.S. farmers will be significantly affected by climate change’s rising temperatures, floods, droughts, and pests – and may lose up to $5 billion annually. For example, beef cattle farmers are projected to lose $44 million annually due to increased temperatures, while rice farmers may lose up to 20% of their annual yield by 2050. The RIPE Roadmap payments can help farmers afford to invest in the adaptation changes they need, such as –  cover cropping, which help manage fluctuations in water supplies; and improved air conditioning systems for livestock operations.

The key distinction is that carbon farming and offset proposals pay farmers ONLY for the greenhouse gas value of their practices, which is typically in the $1-10/acre for most climate-smart practices, at a $20/ton of carbon price. Yet the cost of a climate policy on farmers averages roughly $30/acre from higher energy and fertilizer costs, at that carbon price. Carbon farming payments are better than nothing, but since most farmers are still left at a net economic loss, we prefer a better deal that recognizes the tremendous value farmers and ranchers can contribute to our environmental benefits when considering the climate, water, soil, and other ecosystem services.  Another difference with carbon farming payments is that RIPE’s proposed payments avoid “additionality” requirements – such as strict and costly verification demands, and penalizing early actors – because it is not an environmental quality market mechanism but rather an independent USDA program based on program-wide values.

Yes. RIPE’s proposal helps with flooding by investing in farm practices that mitigate flooding and by compensating farmers fairly for those efforts. Farmers would be compensated for the value of their flood mitigation efforts when they adapt stewardship practices.

Flooding annually costs the United States $8 billion, according to the National Weather Service.  Severe flooding events inundate agricultural fields, prevent and reduce crop plantings by millions of acres, and erode valuable topsoil from fields. RIPE supports compensating stewardship practices that help reduce these flood risks.

Practices likely to be compensated by RIPE’s proposal include cover crops, reduced tillage, rotational grazing, and silvopasture. All of these practices hold soil in place during flooding events, in turn preventing sedimentation in waterways and overland flow. Stewardship practices lessen the effects of flooding and reduces the amount of standing water on fields and pastures. 

In addition, flooding pollutes waterways. Pesticides and fertilizers, carried as runoff, damage fishing and recreation, as well as aquatic and terrestrial biodiversity. RIPE supports nutrient management, which lowers the nitrogen and phosphorus applications to soil, to protect the health of neighboring waterways.

Furthermore, RIPE’s proposed federal fund could support riparian buffers, particularly wooded buffers, which may be the most effective agricultural tool for flood mitigation. Buffer plants stabilize streambanks, slow sediment-laden runoff, and absorb the pollutants attached. In fact, riparian buffers along the Missouri River were estimated to reduce damage by almost half during a large flood in 1993. Buffers absorb rainwater and restore groundwater levels, while slowing runoff release, thereby reducing the intensity and frequency of flooding events.

We welcome your involvement!

To learn more, and explore possibilities to serve as an advisory committee member or ad-hoc advisor to RIPE, please visit our get involved overview page to see the many opportunities we have for you to participate in and support RIPE. In particular, RIPE is creating new and exciting opportunities for growers at every level to get involved in their state and nationally.

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