Biden delivering remarks about his 2019 climate plan (Image Source: Patrick Semansky, Associated Press)

Although he ran as a moderate, President-Elect Joe Biden’s climate plan is fairly progressive. Pushing for renewable energy infrastructure, rejoining global climate agreements, and creating American jobs along the way make up the bulk of his 2019 campaign climate platform. A few of the talking points in his platform deviate from what we’ve seen before in American political discourse. Among these are a brief mention of soil carbon sequestration. Soil carbon sequestration practices will be needed to address climate change, but Biden will need to consider the complexities of the US agricultural system if he wants to implement them effectively.

Soil carbon sequestration, in Biden’s own words, involves working “to remove carbon dioxide from the air and store it in the ground.” In practice, this can look like promoting no-till and multi-crop agricultural fields. The U.S. already does some of this. The Environmental Quality Incentives Program, which provides financial support for farmers using conservation practices, and the Conservation Reserve Program, which compensates farmers for land that they leave fallow are just two examples. Biden’s soil carbon sequestration plan takes these programs one step further and explicitly connects the health of agricultural soils to the nation’s mitigation of climate change.

Constructed by climate scientists, officials from the Obama presidency, and members of Biden’s transition team, the Climate 21 Project implores the U.S. Department of Agriculture to implement a national carbon bank within Biden’s first 100 days in office. This system would allow farmers storing carbon in their soil to sell credits to the national government. Notably, the price per ton of carbon suggested by the Climate 21 Project is $20 per ton of carbon dioxide, $30 short of the Environmental Defense Fund’s minimum estimate of its true social and environmental price.  Including soil in a national carbon market sounds simple, but the Biden administration must consider construct this program carefully to ensure its eventual success.

Any national carbon market must also recognize the inequities inherent in the American agricultural system. U.S. farming is overwhelmingly white by design. While the Climate 21 Project’s memo to the USDA does mention a need for “diversity, inclusion, and environmental justice,” in the implementation of its recommendations, there is no such mention of how these principles would factor into a national carbon market. Biden’s explicit support for the Justice for Black Farmers Act would be a good way to signal that his administration is committed to racial justice in U.S. agriculture. This step would also signal that these principles may also be taken seriously in its design of a national carbon market.

None of these complexities mean that Biden should abandon the idea of a soil-based carbon market completely. Australia has financially incentivized soil carbon sequestration on farms since 2013 through its Emissions Reduction Fund and has plans to increase these efforts imminently. Climate scientists and soil ecologists alike tell us time and time again that soil carbon sequestration is powerful. Estimates of the amount of carbon stored in soil annually range from 1 to 3 billion tons. With climate change, the ground is buying us time.

Automated greenhouse gas emission measurement tool used in Australia’s soil carbon sequestration system (Image Source: Western Australia Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development)

But there is a limit to what farms’ soil can fix for us. The Climate 21 proposal focuses only on farmland as a potential site for carbon storage, and in doing so ignores the potential of other ecosystems to store huge amounts of carbon. Peatlands, for instance, store more carbon annually than all other ecosystem types combined. Prairies too, which are prevalent in the U.S., can store tons of carbon in their extensive root systems. A robust, climate driven soil carbon market must also include these non-agricultural ecosystems.

Biden and the Climate 21 Project’s emphasis on soil carbon sequestration is a microcosm of larger problems with mainstream discourse around the climate crisis. Yes, we must take action to ensure that we do not squander the soil’s amazing ability to shield just from the full force of the carbon that we emit. But this action should account for and work to dismantle the inequities inherent in the U.S. agricultural system. This action should apply to every ecosystem that is scientifically relevant, not just farming where it is more politically popular. It should not undervalue the damage that we are doing to our planet and to each other.

Climate change is a global, complex issue, and the soil carbon sequestration side of things is no exception. The level of nuance necessary to successfully implement soil carbon sequestration frameworks in the U.S. is huge. Now that we have an administration that agrees with scientists about the basic facts of climate change, we may be closer to having these necessary conversations about how best to implement effective and lasting climate policies.