FLA Provides Private Forest Owner Perspective for USDA’s Climate-Smart Agriculture and Forestry Partnership Program

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) recently announced a Climate-Smart Agriculture and Forestry Partnership Program, which would serve to expand the use of climate-smart farming and forestry practices and aid markets for forest- or agriculture-sequestered carbon.

In our comments to USDA, FLA emphasized, “The climate mitigation benefits of a privately managed forest begin with the commitment, investment, and hard work of the landowner. We know the most important way to sustain private working forests that provide climate solutions is to sustain the landowners that own and manage those forests.”

FLA also stressed that all forest-based climate mitigation programs should acknowledge the climate benefits that family and private landowners provide and work with the landowner to achieve climate mitigation at scale by not hindering the landowners’ ability to own, manage and profit from their land while keeping working forests working. Our comments also highlighted that carbon markets can and should coexist with strong traditional wood markets.

We believe that although there is much room for improvement in the current carbon marketplace, the USDA should not infringe on that free market. Our comments reiterated that the role of the USDA in the carbon market space should be to invest in research and technology that will help private carbon market providers measure carbon and carbon benefits on forests and wood products in a more consistent, reliable way.

Read FLA’s full comments here.