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Michigan Climate Smart Farm verifications coming soon

Michigan farms could soon receive climate smart verifications as part of a new USDA pilot project.

Megan Phillips Goldenberg with the Michigan Climate Smart Farm Project tells Brownfield a $4.7 million Climate Smart Commodities Grant will assist farms in adopting conservation practices and developing new markets.

“Our particular focus of this grant in this pilot phase is specialty crops going direct-to-consumer market channels and so that kind of opens up a wide variety of potential conservation practices,” she explains.

She says an advisory council and working groups focused on marketing and science have been finalizing what a verification program will include and how to track carbon impacts.

“A lot of it is going to be practice and farm specific—this farm on this soil type is putting this practice in place,” she says.

Phillips Goldenberg says partners have identified 43 USDA conservation practices that could be considered, and farms will work with the University of Michigan to calculate emission reductions.

The project is also identifying climate smart practices that overlap with verification components in the Michigan Agriculture Environmental Assurance Program (MAEAP).

“Is climate smart a whole different track within MAEAP?” she says the program will consider. “Is MAEAP a track within climate smart? Are they two separate conversations and two separate programs? Our final deliverable at the end of this grant will be a series of recommendations.”

She says the goal is to make the verification process accessible and scalable for all farm types, potentially adjust MAEAP to include climate smart activities, and improve farmer resilience.

Climate smart farm technicians will start enrolling farmers later this fall throughout Washtenaw, Lenawee, Monroe, and Wayne counties.

AUDIO: Megan Phillips Goldenberg, Michigan Climate Smart Farm Project