Policy
Making our public infrastructure work for us
Land Core believes soil is our common ground. This informs our pragmatic, non-partisan approach to soil health policy, elevating the voices of farmers, and building broad coalitions of support to put soil health at the center of a resilient food and agriculture system.
Much like a think tank, we listen deeply and distill issues to develop actionable solutions, and serve as on-the-ground advocates and educators.
By selecting our moments carefully, Land Core has been able to have an outsized impact on the national soil health conversation. From the annual Appropriations cycle to the every five-year Farm Bill, we work closely with Congress and USDA to develop and implement sound policies that help our producers stay profitable, productive and resilient.
We also advise coalitions and other organizations on how to engage effectively in federal soil health policy.
Policy Wins
FY20 Appropriations
Built a broad coalition and passed report language in the House & Senate to establish national protocols for soil health verification at USDA-NRCS. Learn more →
Soil Health Demo Trials
Helped pass the Soil Heath Demonstration Trials in the 2018 Farm Bill and secured $50M in funding for the program. Learn more →
Rulemaking Success
Delivered thorough recommendations and additional support to ensure NRCS-CIG developed a robust process for measuring soil health results. Learn more →
Mobilizing Coalitions
Helped engage hundreds of farmers, farming orgs, national brands and businesses, NGOs and academics to sign on and actively support resilient soil health legislation last year. Learn more →
Support the DEFER Act!
Join other organizations in supporting access to flexible funding for soil health!
The DEFER Act would allow all current and future FSA direct loan holders to defer half their annual payments when they invest in approved soil conservation practices, and could contribute hundreds of millions of dollars to US soil conservation at no additional cost to taxpayers.
This proposal has attracted the support of 175 organizations, businesses and farms across the country. See the full supporter list here.
Learn more in the one-page overview and FAQ. Request a copy of the draft legislative text here.
We are calling on organizations, farmers and businesses to sign on to this letter of support calling on Congress to support the DEFER Act.
Policy Recommendations for Biden-Harris Administration
Soil Health is a non-partisan, keystone issue that provides the common ground to move America forward.
These executive, legislative, and agency recommendations are designed to ensure the incoming administration has clear guidance on how to take bold action in advancing soil health to build a more resilient and profitable US agricultural system.
Soil Health Federal Bill Tracker
This tracker highlights bills introduced into U.S. Congress that would impact soil health and resilience. This expanded version now features analysis and talking points, and is intended to be a robust source of information and potential engagement for the soil health community. To receive periodic updates when new bills are added or major action is taken in Congress, join the bill tracker alerts list.
Memos, Comments & Hearings
Here, a selection of memos and comments submitted during Congressional hearings, rulemaking and other opportunities for public comment.
Risk Modeling
Building a Predictive Model of Risk
Land Core is proud to share our project to build an actuarially-sound, predictive model of the risk-mitigating benefits of soil health practices, designed as a tool to inform lenders and insurers.
Although there is a general understanding that healthy soils can mitigate risk in agriculture (by increasing resilience to flooding and drought, etc.), institutions that price risk, such as banks and insurers, do not yet have a clear and effective way to incorporate these benefits into their risk pricing today.
We have convened a remarkable, cross-sector working group, to build a model that can generate a risk score for individual farms or ranches, such that actuarially-appropriate pricing can be developed. With that information, farmers and ranchers with a plan to implement soil health practices can receive meaningful economic benefits, such as discounted insurance premiums or lower rate loans.
The Land Core Risk Model will be:
A pragmatic decision-making tool to inform agricultural finance and insurance
Actuarially sound
Able to assign a risk score based on an individual producer’s soil health management plan
Piloted at regional-scale in the U.S. midwest in 2023-2024
In the News
AgFunder News: Should ag lenders and crop insurers offer ‘good soil discounts’ to farmers? Land Core develops ‘actuarially sound model’ to make it possible
August 4, 2023
“Insurers offer discounts for avoiding smoking and good driving because these practices are proven to mitigate risk and save them money. So should insurers and agricultural lenders offer farmers that look after their soil a ‘good soil discount’?
While it’s generally understood that cover cropping, reduced tillage, and crop rotations benefit soil, these practices are by no means ubiquitous, not least because there are high upfront costs, the benefits don’t come overnight, and there are no immediate financial incentives, says soil health nonprofit Land Core.
Insurers and lenders, meanwhile, do not currently offer discounts for farmers engaging in such practices because their specific impacts at the field level, especially on crop yields, have not been quantified, it says. Until now.”
We are thrilled to announce that the Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research (FFAR) is awarding a Seeding Solutions grant to Land Core for the development and expansion of the Land Core Risk Model. Private foundations are providing matching funds for a total project investment of nearly $1.5 million.
Land Core has partnered with Compeer Financial, in which the third-largest cooperative in the Farm Credit System, with ~$30 billion under management, will support our model's MVP development process. Compeer is providing expertise on loan pricing, underwriting, appraisal, crop insurance, legal requirements, etc., and is advising in the development and testing of meaningful incentives for producers.
Land Core will pilot its Model MVP, along with the new incentives, in partnership with Compeer in late 2023 & 2024.
Through this work, Compeer has become the first major agricultural financial services provider to approach risk assessment through the lens of sustainability and soil health.
Land Core is pleased to announce that our partners at UC Berkeley (under the leadership of PI Dr. Timothy Bowles) were awarded a USDA National Institute for Food and Agriculture AFRI Foundational and Applied Science Program grant of $800,000 for academic research directly related to Land Core’s risk model!
The grant, titled “A better bet for the farm: Building a predictive model to quantify how diversified cropping systems affect production and economic risks across a million fields in the Midwest” brings our risk model project investment total to about $2.2M (when including the full award from the Foundation for Food & Agriculture research + matching partners).
Join Us
We’re seeking partners representing lending, investment and insurance to help inform model development. Partners also have the opportunity to develop and pilot incentives for producers.
Land Core Risk Model Project Team
We have assembled a world-class group of modelers, statisticians, economists, soil scientists and farmers that include:
AGROECOLOGY & QUANTITATIVE ECOLOGY
Tim Bowles, Ph.D, Associate Professor of Agroecology and Sustainable Agricultural Systems, Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, University of California Berkeley; Co-Project Investigator
Jiajie Kong, Ph.D, UC Berkeley, Statistics Postdoctoral Researcher
Yvonne Socolar, Ph.D, Agroecology, Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management, UC Berkeley; Model Development Advisor
Ben Goldstein, Ph.D, Department of Environmental Science, Policy, & Management, UC Berkeley - Spatial Analysis Advisor
STATISTICS
Frederi Viens, Ph.D, Professor, Department of Statistics, Rice University; Co-Project Investigator
Katherine Muller, Ph.D, Biologist, USDA-ARS; Statistical Modeler
Gina Pizzo, Ph.D Candidate, Department of Statistics and Probability, Michigan State University; Statistical Analyst
Sam Manski, Ph.D, Research Associate, Center for Statistical Training and Consulting, Michigan State University; Consulting Analyst
Tyler Bagwell, Ph.D Candidate, Department of Statistics, Rice University; Summer Graduate Statistical Modeler
Tripp Roberts, Ph.D Candidate, Department of Statistics, Rice University; Summer Graduate Statistical Modeler
AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS
Lawson Connor, Ph.D, Assistant Professor, Department of Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness, University of Arkansas; Co-Project Investigator
Ali Dadpay, Ph.D, Associate Professor, Health Science Center School of Public Health, University of North Texas; Farm Finance & Statistical Modeler
Eunchun Park, Ph.D, Assistant Professor, Department of Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness, University of Arkansas; Crop Insurance & Statistical Modeler
DATA MANAGEMENT
Leo Pham, Ph.D Candidate, College of Agriculture & Natural Resources, Michigan State University, MS, Applied Statistics, MSU; Senior Data Scientist, Altice USA; Data Manager
Joseph Weaver, MS Student, Michigan State University; Analytics Platform Consultant
TOOL DEVELOPMENT
Shaun Klopfenstein, Founder and CTO, Nesterly; Back-end Engineer
Anna Zeman, Expert Principal Product Architect, Amplitude; Product Architect
Project Advisors
David Lobell, Ph.D, Professor at Stanford University in the Department of Earth System Science, Stanford Earth; Senior Fellow, Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment; Senior Fellow, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR), Stanford University
Perry de Valpine, Ph.D, Professor in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management, UC Berkeley
Shefali Mehta, Ph.D, Founder and Lead Principal, Open Rivers Consulting Associates; Former Deputy Under Secretary for Research, Education and Economics, USDA)
Maoya Bassiouni, Ph.D, Postdoctoral Researcher, Quantitative Ecosystem Dynamics Lab, Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management, UC Berkeley
Yanghui Kang, Ph.D, Postdoctoral Researcher, UC Berkeley
Kangogo Sogomo, Masters of Development Engineering, UC Berkeley; Geospatial Data Scientist - Cover Crop Data Advisor
Jenette Ashtekar, Ph.D, VP of Sustainability and Regeneration, CiBO Technologies, Inc.
Keith Paustian, Ph.D, University Distinguished Professor, Department of Soil and Crop Sciences, and Senior Research Scientist at the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory, Colorado State University
A Pathway to Carbon Markets?
Soil-based carbon markets hold potential, but by nature, they are pay-for-performance, requiring agricultural producers to undergo an expensive transition and some years of work before realizing any financial benefits.
Read Land Core’s memo outlining a pathway to prosperity for producers: Soil health to de-risk lending and insurance, that pays for the transition to access carbon markets.
Risk Thought Leadership
There is an ever-growing chorus of scientists, farmers, ranchers and businesses acknowledging healthy soil as one of the most effective tools to build resilience and mitigate the risks of flood and drought on agricultural land.
However, the major institutions that are in the business of assessing risk, like insurers, banks, and governments, don’t yet reward producers who are managing their soils responsibly and reducing their risk. (Posted Nov 2019)
Land Leases
Outcomes-Integrated Land Lease Program
Land Core is creating the first scalable, outcomes-verified land lease platform, to bring together landowners, producers and funding partners, to radically advance soil health adoption in America.
This early-stage initiative welcomes partners and funders to pilot the lease and build out the web platform.
Land Core is honored to participate in The Terraton Challenge and be selected by Indigo Ag as the top-ranking finalist in their “Reward” track.
Education
Building Common Ground
Land Core educates key stakeholders about the importance of soil health and amplifies the most opportune calls to action. Some of our work has included:
Advising Congress, USDA, and state officials on the potential of sound soil health policy
Educating businesses, NGO’s, funders, and educators on the importance of soil health as a path to greater resilience and profitability but also the role our government is playing in shaping agriculture
Hosting educational meetings and webinars with local farmer and rancher groups to share federal programs, technical resources, grants, and policy opportunities
Ag Insights
Read and share written pieces from the Land Core team designed to offer a new perspective on hot issues in soil health, agriculture and resilience.
Other News
Catch up on Land Core’s monthly newsletters, federal bill tracker alerts, recent speaking events and other updates.