Climate Change

The Issue

According to the Fourth National Climate Assessment, a federal inter-agency report published by the U.S. Global Change Research Program in 2018:
Rising temperatures, extreme heat, drought, wildfire on rangelands, and heavy downpours are expected to increasingly disrupt agricultural productivity in the United States. Expected increases in challenges to livestock health, declines in crop yields and quality, and changes in extreme events in the United States and abroad threaten rural livelihoods, sustainable food security, and price stability.

The report’s predictions refer primarily to commodity crop and industrial livestock production. It does note that Indigenous knowledge offers important insights and interventions that can inform climate resiliency plans, at the same time that livelihoods of rural communities and Indigenous and Tribal communities face unique and heightened risks from the effects of climate change.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reports that agriculture was responsible for about 11% of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. in 2021. Estimates that also include factors like fertilizer production, land use, and food waste put agriculture’s share of emissions even higher, at 20-25%. The longer conventional and extractive agriculture production methods dominate, and the longer policies that subsidize them remain in place, the higher this share could climb.

Regenerative agriculture practices—those that prioritize diversified agroecological systems, soil health, fertilizer reduction, and livestock grazing at non-industrial scales, etc.—that originated in BIPOC communities, present a path forward.

Dig Deeper

These resources are provided for information only; listing here does not imply an endorsement of any organization or its views by SAFSF.

• Climate Philanthropy Guide
• Climateworks Foundation
• Funding Climate Action: Pathways for Philanthropy
• Climate Change and Philanthropy: A Topic Brief for Donors
• Rural Climate Partnership
• Climate Change Impacts On Agriculture and Food Supply
• Tribal Climate and Conservation
• Federal Strategy to Advance Greenhouse Gas Emissions Measurement and Monitoring for the Agriculture and Forest Sectors
• US Agriculture and the Net Zero Challenge
• USDA Climate Solutions
• USDA Climate Hubs

Also see the multi-sector Funder Toolkit on Climate, Health and Equity, a project of eight philanthropy serving organizations including SAFSF.

Below is a listing of SAFSF programs and resources related to climate change.