The Economic and Policy Challenges of Climate-Smart Agriculture

Climate-smart agriculture promises to mitigate climate change by sequestering carbon in soils on working lands. However, this promise faces substantial policy challenges due to ecological variation, costly measurement, and uncertainty. We summarize the latest scientific literature on carbon sequestration in agricultural soils, and we describe the current policy environment. With that background, we present an economic framework for policy analysis. We conclude by emphasizing (a) the need for better measurement and for policy that is robust to poor measurement, and (b) the importance of improving agricultural productivity to avoid future carbon losses from expanded agricultural land use.