JULY / AUGUST 2019 | MOTHER JONES 17The alternative approach, which includes
growing crops that absorb more carbon and
planting without tilling the soil, is sometimes
referred to as “carbon farming.” In the United
States, where agriculture accounts for about one-
tenth of greenhouse gas emissions, these adap-
tations could, in the best-case scenario, offset
all agricultural emissions. One analysis of these
techniques found that they can sequester nearly
a ton of carbon per 10 acres annually—the equiv-
alent of taking one car off the road for 70 days.
Even more carbon could be stored if farmers
planted more trees and permanent vegetation.
Many growers already embrace these techniques,
in part because they enrich the soil. “We’re all in
the carbon reduction business,” a large man in
suspenders said during the workshop.
There are signs that Russell is making head-
way. Chris Teachout, a corn and soy farmer from Shenandoah,
Iowa, told me that within a month of attending an Interfaith
Power and Light meeting, he received calls from two pastors
asking if he would put on similar events at their churches.
Agriculture, he said, offers conservatives a path to “slip in”
to the climate conversation. Unlike coal-fired power plants
and carbon taxes, dirt is not a partisan issue. Farmers and
environmentalists have found common ground in the bur-
geoning soil health movement. By championing farming
practices that could boost fertility, reduce costs, and increase
yields (not to mention reduce erosion and water pollution
and make crops more resilient during extreme weather), the
effort might be a win-win for everyone.
Russell is piggybacking on that movement, but he takes
issue with how environmental groups avoid mentioning cli-
mate change in front of growers. “They’ll say farmers don’t
want to talk about climate change, but they’ll talk about
water quality, they’ll talk about organic matter in the soil,
even if they won’t talk about sequestration,” he told me. He
said the time for semantic games is over. “Moving Republi-
cans to engage with climate action as Republicans, that gets
to a huge accelerant of what’s possible.”
A few prominent Iowa conservatives are already getting
their hands dirty. When Ray Gaesser, a no-till farmer, ran
for Iowa secretary of agriculture last year, he told reporters
that he did not believe human activity was responsible for all
climate change. But after attending an Interfaith Power and
Light meeting earlier this year, he pledged to help Russell.
When I met him in his tidy white equipment shed outside
Corning, Iowa, he told me he believed it was time for farmers
to claim the “leadership mantle” in mitigating climate change,
in part because farmers “are also sequestering carbon, but
nobody’s giving them credit.”
Gaesser lost the primary, but he now serves on President
Donald Trump’s agriculture advisory committee, and he
counts many of the Department of Agriculture’s senior lead-
ers as friends. At the end of our conversation, he let slip that
he was on the way to Des Moines to meet with Secretary of
State Mike Pompeo, a notorious climate denier who only
recently acknowledged that there is “likely a human com-
ponent” to global warming.
Fred Yoder, an Ohio farmer who’s also on the president’s
agriculture committee and once helmed the National Corn
Growers Association, told me that while subsidies and incen-
tives to help farmers sequester carbon are not exactly at the
top of the administration’s agenda, the midterm elections
may have signaled a turning point: “The administration, now
they’re forced to be looking at climate change initiatives be-
cause the House has been taken by Democrats,” said Yoder,
who chairs the North American Climate Smart Agriculture
Alliance. “Quite frankly, I’m just glad that we at least have
to talk about it now.”
But the biggest obstacle to taking action may not be par-
tisan politics. “What is missing, in your experience, from
getting farmers to be more leaders on engaging with the
problem?” Russell asked the crowd at the church. “Financial
reward,” blurted out the farmer in suspenders, to nods and
grunts of agreement.
Studies have found that converting to no-till farming and
cover crops could potentially pay for itself in the long run,
but the initial investment is difficult when commodity crop
prices hover near the cost of production. The Department
of Agriculture offers several incentives for improving soil
health, but they have yet to be widely adopted. In February, a
consortium of food and agriculture giants, including General
Mills and McDonald’s, announced plans to create a private-
sector carbon market dedicated wholly to agriculture by 2022.
Russell told the farmers in Grinnell that he was confident a
revenue stream for carbon sequestration would soon mate-
rialize. “If you put carbon in the atmosphere, you’re going
to have to pay. If you can figure out how to pull it out of the
atmosphere, you’re going to get paid,” he said.
For Gaesser, the recent floods that submerged large swaths
of the Midwest are all the motivation he needs. He’ll plant
most of his land with cover crops—both to keep it from wash-
ing away and to capture carbon. “We thought we were doing
really good,” he said, “until we started getting four inches of
rain in an hour.” —Brian BarthFALLOW TRAVELERSIs planting soybeans and corn the best
use for all that Midwestern country-
side? When Michigan State Univer-
sity researchers used satellite images
to assess 74 million acres of Corn Belt
farmland over eight years, they found
that more than a quarter was under-
performing.If farmers fallowed that land, the study sug-
gests, they’d annually save $485 million on fertil-
izer and cut down on 7.5 million tons of carbon dioxide
emissions, the equivalent of taking more than 1.4 million
cars off the road. —Tom PhilpottConsistent
low-yield
crops