The Trump administration’s push against climate-smart farm programs is throwing headwinds at the U.S. agriculture industry, a top Biden administration official said.
Robert Bonnie, formerly undersecretary of Agriculture for farm production and conservation, said Monday that there’s solid support among farmers, agriculture companies and consumers for food grown with lower climate impacts, even as the federal government now retreats from the idea.
“I think U.S. agriculture is poised, given our efficiency, the technology we have … to be leaders on this, and it’d be a shame if we lost that,” Bonnie told reporters at the annual meeting of the North American Agricultural Journalists.
Bonnie, who helped craft the Biden administration’s conservation and climate-smart agriculture programs, criticized the new administration’s pullback in what he said were his first public remarks about it since the end of the Biden administration.
