Title: Climate Change--Building Greater Resilience in Agriculture

Description: American farmers, ranchers and other agricultural producers
are increasingly facing the impacts of climate change. Federal insurance
programs can help offset some of these financial impacts. But as extreme
weather events increase, so does the government's financial exposure. We
find out more about federal efforts to create greater climate resilience
in agriculture from GAO's Steve Morris.

Related GAO Work: GAO-23-104557, Climate Change: Options to Enhance the
Resilience of Agricultural Producers and Reduce Federal Fiscal Exposure 

Released: February 2023

[Music]

[Steve Morris:] The changes in the climate have already had some
significant impacts on our agricultural system and have resulted in
billions of dollars of losses thus far.

[Holly Hobbs:] Hi and welcome to GAO's Watchdog Report. Your source for
news and information from the U.S. Government Accountability Office. I'm
your host, Holly Hobbs. American farmers, ranchers and other
agricultural producers are increasingly facing the impacts of climate
change. Droughts, for example, can lead to crop losses and large
financial costs for farmers. Federal insurance programs can help offset
some of these financial impacts. But as extreme weather events increase,
so does the government's financial exposure. Today, we'll talk with
GAO's Steve Morris, an expert on federal agriculture programs, about
some steps being taken to enhance climate resilience in farming and what
more can be done. Thanks for joining us.

[Steve Morris:] Great to be here with you today, Holly.

[Holly Hobbs:] So, Steve, can you start by giving us some examples of
how climate change is already impacting farmers and ranchers?

[Steve Morris:] Yeah, absolutely, Holly. You know, farmers and ranchers
are really on the front lines of climate change. They're going to
continue to experience extreme weather events now and in the future. So
we're likely to see some areas of the country, for example, experiencing
high temperatures and frequent droughts and devastating fires. But
you're going to have other areas that are going to experience severe
storms and torrential rainfall and major flooding. You know, the changes
in climate are also going to probably spread harmful pest and disease to
new areas, which is going to make farming and ranching even more
difficult.

[Holly Hobbs:] What about the financial impacts? What have they been so
far and what is the government's role in helping farmers with those
costs? 

[Steve Morris:] The changes in the climate have already resulted in
billions of dollars of losses. As there's more and more extreme weather
events, the cost of providing financial assistance to the farmers and
ranchers impacted by events also increases. You'll see, over the last
several years, Congress has directed more than $15 billion in aid to
farmers because of losses due to natural and weather related disasters. 
You know, another way the government helps farmers is through the
federal crop insurance program. And this is a multi-billion dollar
program which provides coverage on over 100 different crops and
products. And according to USDA, the overall cost of their program
actually could increase almost 40% in the coming decades if no action is
taken to enhance the climate resilience of the farmers and ranchers.

[Holly Hobbs:] And what about the impacts on consumers? For example,
what could we see at the grocery store? 

[Steve Morris:] Climate change is going to have some multiple, I'd say,
cascading impacts. So what you're going to see is, you know, as the
environment is impacted, so will our agricultural system and
productivity. And in turn that's going to impact the availability and
cost of food as well. You'll also see on a broader scale impacts on our
society and economy as a whole. You have to remember, U.S. agriculture
is really a huge business. It accounts for almost 20 million jobs. So
any significant impact could have a devastating impact also on people's
livelihoods, right. So think of it this way, it's very essential and it
touches all of us, hopefully every day, three times a day. We need to
make sure that our agricultural system is strong and that farmers and
ranchers are really resilient to the extreme weather events coming their
way. That's what building resilience is really all about, right? It's
about taking action today so that we can help minimize the effects of
disaster tomorrow.

[Holly Hobbs:] So, Steve, with all that said, what is the Department of
Agriculture doing to help reduce this exposure or to help farmers and
ranchers avoid climate related losses?

[Steve Morris:] Well, Holly, the good news is that USDA has already
taken some important steps. And I'll give you a couple of examples. USDA
has created a Climate Change Program Office, and it's essentially a way
of the department coordinating all the efforts that are designed to
provide some assistance to farmers and ranchers. USDA has also
established what's called regional climate hubs, and there's about ten
of them across the country. And these hubs are really designed to
provide some real-time, region specific information to farmers and
ranchers to help them better understand the vulnerabilities they're
facing, and also provide some ways to mitigate against some of those
risks. So just as an example, we looked at one hub that developed it
basically was an online tool that farmers could access to identify like
specific actions they could take. So, for example, planting drought and
heat tolerant crops in areas of the country that were predicted to
become drier and hotter.

[Holly Hobbs:] And you said these are important steps, but in our
report, we identified some additional actions USDA should be taking,
right? 

[Steve Morris:] Well, USDA has made some good progress. We found some
additional opportunities that could help enhance some of their climate
resilience efforts. So, we identified 13 options that we think could
prove helpful. These include things like, and I just mentioned the
climate hubs, but, expanding their role and their capacity so they could
serve even more farmers and ranchers throughout the country. Another is
creating some additional incentives in programs, such as the Federal
Crop Insurance Program, to basically encourage and incentivize farmers
to adopt what's considered climate resilient practices like planting
cover crops and improving irrigation systems. That sort of thing. Now
each option we identified has its strengths and limitations. We
acknowledge that. But, you know, we think by implementing multiple
options, USDA could kind of leverage some of the strengths and
limitations of these various options. In addition to all that, some of
these options, if adopted, really could enhance the resilience of the
USDA efforts and also reduce the government's fiscal exposure to the
effects of climate change. So that's a good thing.

[Holly Hobbs:] So we've shared our list of 13 things with USDA. How did
they respond?

[Steve Morris:] We did share this with the department. You know, they
essentially agreed that a combination of the various options we
identified would likely be more effective in helping producers enhance
their climate resilience. They told us, however, that they may need some
additional authority and additional resources to fully implement all
these options.

{MUSIC}

[Holly Hobbs:] So Steve just told us that the Department of Agriculture
has already taken important steps to help farmers and ranchers respond
to climate change and reduce federal financial exposure. But that we
identified additional steps USDA could take to improve its efforts. So,
Steve, what needs to happen for USDA to act on the additional steps we
identified? 

[Steve Morris:] We made a recommendation that USDA conduct a pretty
comprehensive analysis of the 13 options we identified as a way to help
guide and prioritize their own climate resilience efforts. And we also
specified that USDA should identify any additional authority or
resources it may need to implement these various options. The good news
here is that USDA agreed with the recommendation, and they're taking
some initial steps to implement it.

[Holly Hobbs:] And last question, what's the bottom line of this report?

[Steve Morris:] We're already seeing changes in climate, right. And it's
already had major impacts on farmers and ranchers. And these impacts are
expected to worsen in the future. The government really can play a key
role here in helping ranchers and farmers by fully, really supporting
them in terms of enhancing their resilience. Implementing the options we
identified in our report would be an important step in that direction.
And in turn, it's going to help reduce the government's fiscal exposure
to the effects of climate change.

[Holly Hobbs:] That was Steve Morris talking about GAO's recent review
of climate resilience and agriculture. Thanks for your time, Steve.

[Steve Morris:] Thank you, Holly.

[Holly Hobbs:] And thank you for listening to the Watchdog Report. To
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