PIERRE, S.D. (MITCHELLNOW) A new Farm Journal poll conducted on behalf of Invest in Our Land across 10 leading agricultural states shows that American farmers and ranchers overwhelmingly believe conservation funding has an important role to play in building their operations’ resilience to increasingly extreme weather and addressing the effects of climate change.
The poll — which surveyed 1,019 farmers, ranchers and producers across Pennsylvania, Arkansas, Georgia, Minnesota, Iowa, Colorado, South Dakota, Michigan, Montana, and Wisconsin — also revealed that, by a double-digit margin, farmers and ranchers want Congress to protect $20 billion in conservation funding originally authorized by the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and ensure those funds remain dedicated to climate-smart practices in the upcoming Farm Bill.
Commissioned by Invest in Our Land and conducted by Farm Journal’s Trust In Food initiative, the survey shows that:
A supermajority of farmers believe conservation funding has an important role to play in building farms’ resilience to extreme weather and addressing the impacts of climate change. 85% of respondents said that conservation funding plays an important role in helping farmers and ranchers adapt in the face of increasingly extreme weather. Similarly, two-thirds (67%) said that conservation funding plays an important role in protecting our planet from the effects of our changing climate.
Two-thirds of farmers say conservation programs increase farms’ resilience to extreme weather. 66% of respondents said they agree that conservation programs “help farmers implement practices and make on-farm upgrades that can increase operational resilience in the event of extreme weather events (such as droughts, floods, etc.)”
6 in 10 farmers support the IRA’s investment in conservation funding. Sixty percent of respondents indicated that they support the IRA’s $20 billion investment in agricultural conservation programs. By contrast, only 18% oppose this investment.
Farmers oppose removing climate-smart requirements from IRA conservation funding by a double-digit margin. 41% of respondents said they would oppose congressional efforts to remove the requirement that the $20 billion in IRA conservation funding be directed only toward conservation practices that have proven to be more effective in reducing carbon emissions (the so-called “climate guardrails”), while only 28% said they would support such an action — representing a 13-point margin in favor of keeping the dollars dedicated to climate-smart conservation. (24% of respondents had no opinion.)