The Corporate Capture of Agricultural Climate ‘Solutions’

Featuring Lisa Elaine Held, Civil Eats

President Biden’s USDA is directing resources towards climate-smart agricultural initiatives like never before, while members of Congress are introducing various bills related to farming and climate impact. With funding now flowing in this direction, the food and agricultural industry’s biggest players are changing their public positioning on climate action and, in many cases, are setting themselves up to benefit. Will these climate policy solutions really reduce greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture or simply further entrench consolidated, industrial food production? Who will benefit? Will there be unintended consequences? This presentation will share recent reporting on agricultural climate solutions that are currently popular in Washington DC—including agricultural carbon markets and methane capture at Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs)—and look at the real impacts of these policies on the ground.

Lisa Elaine Held is the senior policy reporter for Civil Eats, where she covers food and environmental policy and various other aspects of food and agriculture, from local food justice initiatives to multinational meatpacking companies. She covers the food system and the environment for many additional publications, and her stories have been published by The New York Times, The Washington Post, Eater, and NPR. Lisa also publishes a weekly newsletter on Substack called Peeled and produces and hosts the weekly podcast “The Farm Report” on Heritage Radio Network. She has a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University and currently lives in Baltimore.

Each lecture is worth one VBA CLE credit.

Lectures are free and open to the public.

Watch this event at vermontlaw.edu/live.