By Sarah Derouin for Mongabay.
Broadcast version by Mark Moran for Iowa News Service reporting for the Solutions Journalism Network-Public News Service Collaboration

American agroforestry initiatives got a big boost of funding in 2022 from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which allocated $60 million to help farmers transition toward this style of climate-friendlier farming, as part of the Partnership for Climate-Smart Commodities program.

The Nature Conservancy (TNC) is leading the multi-partner effort, allocating money to farmers across 30 states. Dubbed the Expanding Agroforestry Project, it will provide technical assistance and funding to farmers for planting new agroforestry acres on their land. The goal is to plant 12,140 new hectares (30,000 acres) of agroforestry across the U.S.

Recently, Mongabay checked in to see how agroforestry efforts were progressing and whether funds were making their way to farmers. After the first application cycle, farmers in 21 states submitted more than 200 applications to the program, representing about 20% of the agroforestry acreage goals.

Like agroforestry itself, the application, training and distribution of funds take some time to get off the ground — the first incentive payments are anticipated to be disbursed in the summer and fall of 2024.

Expanding Agroforestry Project

The Expanding Agroforestry Project is part of the USDA’s larger Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities program — a $3.1 billion effort to fund projects to fight climate change while supporting landowners. Agroforestry practices are effective at capturing carbon while providing additional commodities and land benefits to farmers.

Above and below ground, agroforestry systems typically capture 2–5 metric tons of CO2 per acre per year. Nate Lawrence, ecosystem scientist for the Savanna Institute, expanded on the science of measuring such figures during a recent podcast.

As the lead administrator of the grant, TNC is “processing $36 million … in incentive payments directly to enrolled producers,” Audrey Epp Schmidt, the agroforestry program manager at The Nature Conservancy, explained in an email.

The remaining $24 million will support the expansion of project partner organizations, including adding staff capacity for the agroforestry work. These funds will also bolster measurement, monitoring, reporting and verification activities and develop market opportunities for agroforestry commodities, she said.

With the influx of federal funding, TNC created a five-year program to provide growers with technical help and funding to support agroforestry efforts. To get the word out, the project partners launched a communication effort that included emails, social media posts and virtual presentations, along with in-person events on farms.

“Producers typically want to hear directly from other producers, so we encourage farmer-to-farmer networks to help drive adoption whenever possible,” Epp Schmidt said.

TNC’s goal is to attract at least 200 farmers to the program, with at least 50 of those being underserved producers, said Epp Schmidt. The USDA defines underserved producers as farmers who are new, have limited financial resources, are socially disadvantaged (either by race or gender) or are military veterans.

Epp Schmidt said the program includes the adoption of alley cropping, silvopasture and windbreak projects.

Alley cropping means planting rows of trees or shrubs within crops, while windbreaks are planted on the edges of fields (stopping or slowing wind erosion while adding biodiversity). Silvopasture is an agroforestry practice that integrates trees, pasture, forage plants and livestock into a single system. She noted the program is focused on adding new fruit, nut, timber and biodiversity-supporting trees that are ecologically suitable for the project site.

Agroforestry enhances biodiversity on farms by breaking up large expanses of the same crop, called monocropping. By planting trees, shrubs and understory plants, farmers can attract beneficial insects, fungi and wildlife to their land, bolstering pollinators and potentially reducing the need for insecticides.

After being accepted to the program, farmers are matched with a technical assistance staff member — each region has its own partner organization — to support developing an agroforestry plan for the farmers’ land.

The program subsidizes the cost of tree planting, providing $36 million in incentive payments directly to producers. Wendy Johnson, a farmer at Jóia Food & Fiber Farm and active agroforestry practitioner in Iowa, said she heard about the program in its early stages and thought it was an important step forward for agroforestry support.

Johnson, who has planted more than 6,000 trees on her farm, is not able to apply for funding from the project — her trees are already in the ground. But she said learning about the program was “really exciting because it’s finally providing a dollar amount that would help with maintenance costs, too.”

She knows that young trees need a lot of care in the early years before they are fully established. “Maintenance is huge, and I can’t stress that enough,” she said. “You can’t just plant a tree and let it go — it also needs shelter and it needs care for the first three years … otherwise that investment is lost.”

Johnson noted that on her own farm, the planted saplings coincided with record drought — and regular watering of the seedlings is a time- and labor-intensive endeavor. Such issues are only likely to amplify due to the worsening impacts of climate change.

Committing to years of maintenance and switching part of a farm to more diversified land use may take a leap of faith. It can also mean farmers have to accept a risk to their profitability, often lasting for years.

“These are complex, perennial systems, and that involves a temporal mindset,” said John Munsell, forest management extension specialist at Virginia Tech. He added that an adaptive management plan will help farmers adjust in the eight-plus years between planting and maturity of trees and shrubs.

Munsell said that a program like Expanding Agroforestry can get farmers to take a chance on planting. “This will tip the scale for many,” he said. And while farmers wait for their plantings to mature, Munsell said the agroforestry community can strengthen the market for forest products. “While your hazelnuts are maturing … you have eight years to move into a market space and set things up.”

Launching the program

The initial application cycle of the Expanding Agroforestry Project received 213 applications from producers in 21 states for the incentive payment program, noted Epp Schmidt. Of these, 93% self-reported as underserved farmers. She said these farmers potentially represent more than “6,300 acres of new agroforestry plantings.”

Farmers who are interested in the program can learn more on TNC’s website. There are two application cycles each year, and the next deadline will be in late summer.



Sarah Derouin wrote this article for Mongabay.


get more stories like this via email

In the aftermath of devastating hurricanes in other parts of the country, the Michigan city of Ferndale will soon unlock close to $370 billion in federal funds to combat the climate crisis closer to home. This support from the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law will be used to help strengthen the city's clean energy plans.

Ferndale Mayor Raylon Leaks-May joined Michigan U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens, D-Rochester Hills, and local leaders at a Tuesday news conference to highlight Ferndale's leadership in clean energy and climate action.

"We are committed to reducing the city's emissions by 63% by 2030, and to become carbon neutral by 2050. An important piece of this is encouraging more residential solar use, as well as designing for more efficient and solar-ready government facilities," Leaks-May said.

The 2023 Clean Jobs America Report says Michigan's clean energy sector added over 5,400 new jobs in 2022.

Stevens has been a driving force behind key environmental legislation, including the Climate Action Now Act, and credits Ferndale's clean energy progress to a collaborative effort.

"And none of this legislation gets done without profound local relationships that we see here in Ferndale each and every day. Yes, this is in many respects a small community - but it is not a quiet community," Stevens said.

By May 2024, Michigan, with funding from the IRA, had launched 45 clean energy projects.

Quinn Zeagler, a member of the Ferndale Environmental Sustainability Commission, said local residents are key to driving these advancements.

"It's up to residents to learn more, to take advantage of the opportunities to make our homes more energy efficient, and more comfortable," Zeagler said.

Michigan has received $159 million in federal funding to help lower the cost of community and rooftop solar installations for thousands of low-income households.

By Michaela Haas for Reasons to be Cheerful.
Broadcast version by Mark Moran for Big Sky Connection reporting for the Solutions Journalism Network-Public News Service Collaboration

Curtis Shuck was inspecting wheat crops with farmers in rural Northern Montana in 2019 when he followed a rotten-egg stench and spotted corroded metal surrounding a borehole. The discovery he stumbled upon would change his life, and eventually the trajectory of carbon emissions in the US: He came across an abandoned oil well that spewed pollution, including methane, into the air and surrounding fields. Once he realized what he was looking at, he identified other wells across the surrounding landscape, left behind in the 1990s after the Gulf War tanked crude prices.

"I couldn't believe what I saw," Shuck says with his heavy Texan drawl. "I was just at the wrong place at the wrong time. Or I was at the right place, depending on how you want to look at it."

The pollution left such a deep impression on the former oil and gas executive that he immediately wanted to take action. His plan: to plug as many oil wells as possible. Before the day was over, he had come up with a name for a nonprofit, Well Done, and registered the domain name TheWellDoneFoundation.org from his truck.

What started out as the epiphany of one hard-charging man has since led to the capping of 45 wells in 14 states. "We just capped our 45th well in Akron, Ohio," Shuck says by phone from the departures hall at the airport in Portland, Oregon, on his mission of crisscrossing the country to find the most urgent wells. "Through that, we have saved over one million tons of CO2e. That's what's so exciting about our work. It's literally gas on, gas off. The benefit is immediate."

This is the story of one man making a sizable difference, but also of the toxic legacy the oil and gas boom has left all over the US. Curtis Shuck is mitigating global warming one well at a time.

An unbelievable 3.7 million abandoned oil and gas wells litter the country and belch more than 300 kilotons of methane or 8.2 million metric tons of CO2e every year, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. More than half of these wells (58 percent) are unplugged and at least 126,000 wells are "orphaned," meaning regulators can no longer find a company or owner to hold accountable. Maybe the oil company went out of business or bankrupt - and landowners and communities are frequently left with the destruction after oil producers have moved on. Often records have gone missing, and nobody even knows where all the old wells are located. "That number just keeps increasing exponentially as oil companies go out of business," Shuck adds.

About 10 percent of the abandoned wells emit large amounts of methane, a greenhouse gas significantly more potent than carbon dioxide in the short term, because of its heat-trapping potential. Studies have found that swift actions to cut methane emissions could slow Earth's warming by 30 percent. The worst well Shuck plugged was emitting more than 10,000 grams of methane per hour. Some also leak other pollutants and brine into surrounding fields or waterways. "It is actually quite difficult to assess how much emission is really occurring," says Adam Peltz, a senior lawyer at the Environmental Defense Fund. "You could go measure on a Tuesday afternoon and again on Thursday morning and get two completely different results."

The oil graveyards have only recently begun to draw attention as major contributors to climate change that demand urgent action. Though Shuck had been working in the oil industry for decades, first as the president of Red River Oil Services in North Dakota, supplying drilling rigs, and then as a transportation and logistics expert for the Port of Vancouver, "I never knew that many wells were simply abandoned," Shuck says. "That was the industry's dirty little secret, and nobody wanted anything to do with it."

He plugged the first well in 2020 "out of our piggy bank, with my and my wife's savings." To this day, he does not draw a salary from Well Done. While still working as a consultant for transportation logistics, he says, "plugging oil wells is my side hustle that takes 90 percent of my time."

Among the dozens of requests he receives every month from landowners, regulatory agencies and communities, he prioritizes the "most urgent wells." Factors include not only the amount of methane and other carcinogens an orphaned well emits, but also how close the well is to a community and how severe the impacts of its pollution. "I've worked on abandoned wells that leak oil into the waterways," he gives as an urgent example. "That's so alarming you want to get to work right away."

Once Well Done "adopts" a well, the organization accepts full financial responsibility. "We have to be careful on the front end because these wells are so expensive. We don't want to load ourselves up too much with liabilities," he cautions. "We have more wells than cents."

Well Done's 10 employees, including Shuck's wife Stacey, work with landowners, local residents, stakeholders and regulatory agencies to raise the necessary funds, secure permits and hire a team on the ground. "Sometimes we get permits really quickly, sometimes it takes longer, but generally, we give ourselves a year to cap a well," Shuck says. He emphasizes that he works with local service companies and workers whenever possible, to build relationships with the community, but he also organizes "field camps," where even people with no prior experience in the industry can learn to measure methane output and help the nonprofit.

Each well is different, but capping most abandoned wells requires pouring thousands of pounds of cement down the hole to keep the gas down. While the average cost is around $75,000, the worst well, a "super-emitter," as Shuck put it, cost him more than $375,000 because he first had to clean out the failing old infrastructure before he could start capping.

But why is a nonprofit taking care of cleanups that should be the responsibility of the oil producers or the state?

Each state has different laws, but until recently, most state laws were rather lenient in allowing producers to let their oil wells sit idle, and oil producers were rarely held accountable for the destruction they left behind. Recognizing the urgency of the issue, the Biden administration restored Obama-era emission standards for the oil industry, and in 2021, it allocated $1.36 billion to measure and reduce methane emissions plus nearly $5 billion to plug orphaned wells, aiming for an 80 percent reduction in methane emissions from the oil and gas sector.

This sounds like a lot of money, but it is far from enough: In California alone, more than 41,000 wells sit idle, and the Sierra Club estimates that cleaning and plugging all wells in California will cost $23 billion.

"Well, you could wait around for federal money if you want to wait a long time," says Shuck, who has received no federal money for capping wells but has applied for some state grants. Well Done gets funding from private donors and some companies, including oil and gas companies. Sometimes locals and climate activists band together to fundraise for a problem well in their neighborhood. "The problem is so large and so urgent in terms of need, we're just in the getting-shit-done business," Shuck says. "We celebrate every well we finish. The problem is not going away anytime soon, and if you like immediate results, you just do the work."

As of April 2024, the Bureau of Land Management now requires oil and gas companies to set aside more funds for well-plugging before they receive a drilling permit, but even by the Bureau's own calculations, this recent initiative won't suffice and in any case, it doesn't cover the toxic wells from the past.

"There's been a tremendous amount of industry pushback against these reforms because their business model for decades has been to avoid plugging these wells, and the huge cost is currently being externalized to the public," says Adam Peltz, who helped draft the federal orphan well closure funding legislation. Nevertheless, he is convinced the problem can be solved, both by stringent policies and by putting pressure on the culprits. "There is no excuse to orphan a well. Exxon makes $40 billion a year in profit," Peltz points out. "Exxon alone could plug half the wells in the United States with its profits if it wanted. People often talk about small mom-and-pop-operators whose livelihood depends on their business, and I believe this is a problem that should be socialized among the industry and not socialized to the public."

He also sees the economic upside: plugging the most urgent wells, he notes, "creates thousands of well-paying blue-collar jobs. If we get this right, in addition to taking care of groundwater contamination, methane emissions and explosive risks, this is a huge economic opportunity." He mentions the Louisiana Chamber of Commerce Foundation that is connecting small businesses in the oil patch with federally funded orphan well closure opportunities.

Most states and some cities are now trying to negotiate with oil producers to get them to take responsibility for properly cleaning up abandoned wells. For instance, Culver City was the first city in California to pass an ordinance to close all oil wells by the end of this decade. Assistant City Manager Jesse Mays stresses that Culver City sought dialogue with the oil producers early on to make sure the companies would cap the wells rather than leaving the costs to taxpayers. "We decided that it would be better and more productive for us to come to an agreement with both of our best interests in mind," he says. "As opposed to just passing our ordinance, writing them a letter demanding they comply and leaving it at that." However, Mays was unable to provide crucial details about the extent of the capping, and admitted the city extended permits in exchange for the assurance of well capping. Versions of these negotiations currently play out all over the US.

Curtis Shuck stays clear of pointing blame: "Whether you are a climate crusader or a climate denier, a Republican or Democrat, capping these wells is simply the right thing to do, and I try to find common ground as the basis for our projects."

Shuck's flight is being called. He's off to Montana, to start working on capping his 46th well.


Michaela Haas wrote this article for Reasons to be Cheerful.


get more stories like this via email

A diverse coalition of groups is opposing an initiative in Washington that could upend the state's push to make buildings greener and more efficient. Initiative 2066 would stop the state's efforts to transition from natural gas and halt local efforts to do the same.

Kerry Meade, executive director of the Washington state-based organization Building Potential, said the initiative would also roll back back energy-efficiency programs that utility companies are running to help people save on energy costs and install efficient equipment.

"It would pull a lot of funding away from those sorts of programs that support people in being able to cost effectively do that, and a lot of that money actually goes to more low-income and moderate-income customers," Meade said.

Meade noted that equipment like electric heat pumps is less costly than equipment that runs on natural gas. Unions, environmental groups and health organizations are among those opposing the measure. Supporters of the initiative say it will ensure Washingtonians have a choice if they want to use natural gas.

Leah Missik, Washington deputy policy director with Climate Solutions, said it's concerning that the initiative would take away cities' ability to decide on this issue.

"It also is a direct attack on local control. It would prevent local communities, local governments from passing policies around their own communities' energy choice in a way that makes sense to them," she contended.

Missik added that there are many benefits to the state - and the climate - for moving away from natural gas.

"We are future proofing, we are making sure we are resilient as we move along the pathway to more clean energy and protecting folks from the climate crisis and its impact that it's having right now," she continued.