The USDA is seeking input from farmers about its new Climate Smart Agriculture and Forestry Initiative, a plan that will allocate $3 billion to support drought resilience and response, animal disease prevention, market disruption relief and purchase of food for school nutrition programs. The deadline to submit comments is Nov. 1, 2021. 

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is investing $10 million in a new initiative to sample, measure and monitor soil carbon on Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) acres to better quantify the climate outcomes of the program. The initiative will begin implementation in fall 2021 with three partners who will conduct soil carbon sampling on three categories of CRP practice types: perennial grasses, trees and wetlands.

Corn, soybean and cotton production is up from 2020, according to the Crop Production report issued on Sept. 10 by USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS). Corn production is up 6% from last year, forecast at 15.0 billion bushels; soybean growers are expected to increase their production 6% from 2020, forecast at 4.37 billion bushels; cotton production is up 27% from 2020 at 18.5 million 480-pound bales.