Reacting to negative news coverage at the conclusion of the Conference of the Parties in Madrid on climate change, also known as COP25, Solutions from the Land (SFL), a U.S. group that made presentations there, said that agriculture offers solutions to help mitigate climate change, but that farmers need to be paid for engaging in those practices.

“As strongly emphasized by SFL and North America Climate Smart Agriculture Alliance (NACSAA) representatives to COP delegates and other UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) members over the past two years, the sector offers well-proven strategies and practices for carbon retention and greenhouse gas reduction — cover crops, no- and low-till soil preparation, rotational grazing, precision input management, animal waste conversion to energy, among others — that should become a focus of the recommendations expected to come out of COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland, next year,” SFL said in a news release this week.

But the group added, “Critical to the success of those agriculturally based approaches is the compensation that should be paid to those who work the land and are taking on the additional effort and expense to implement landscape scale solutions.”

“While the discussion and promotion of climate smart agriculture (CSA) appears to be ramping up on the global level, we urge all stakeholders — farmers, ranchers, forestland owners, supply chain interests and others — to carry the CSA message to local, state and national policy makers.

“The world deserves to know that the agricultural sector is a valuable ally in stemming the volatile changes to our climate. Please join with SFL in calling for the adoption and implementation of policies that will best guarantee that these solutions from the land are put to work.”

Negotiators in Madrid “got hung up in contentious, and unresolved, debates, like that over the establishment of an international market for the trading of carbon permits, and another over the call for compensation for smaller nations to be paid by larger, high-emitting countries,” SFL said.