ARLINGTON, VA –
The Rice Stuff podcast examination of climate change continues with
Episode 43, “Climate Change – Policy,” with some heavy hitters.
The episode’s guests are Steve Dyokas, senior advisor in the State Department’s Office of Global Change; USDA Under Secretary for Farm Production and Conservation Robert Bonnie; and Arkansas rice farmer and Field to Market Board of Directors member Mark Isbell.
“Climate is a huge priority for the Biden Administration and their commitment can be seen in all aspects of the way they govern and in all kinds of policy initiatives,” said show co-host Michael Klein. “Dyokas is at the U.S. Department of State where he works on the AIM for Climate initiative, a joint program between the U.S. and United Arab Emirates, but that would seem to indicate the President sees climate policy as a tool of diplomacy. We asked him about that.”
While AIM for Climate focuses quite a bit on overseas production, Under Secretary Bonnie’s work is closer to home.
“I think of USDA as kind of our home team,” said show co-host Lesley Dixon. “So not only did we have a team captain on the show, but Bonnie was so obviously well-versed in rice issues – from habitat creation to input costs, it was encouraging to visit with him.”
Bonnie explained that “USDA’s approach, as we think about agriculture and forestry, is going to be about incentive-based, voluntary approaches. If it doesn’t work for our producers…it’s not going to work for the climate. Part of the thinking with Partnerships for Climate Smart Commodities was trying to do something that can be integrated into working lands and production agriculture.”
Mark Isbell refined the conversation even more, looking at climate policies through the lens of the rice farm.
“We've got to make sure that we never look at a one-size-fits all approach,” Isbell said. “Unfortunately, it's easy for people to latch on to something like cover crops. It's fantastic, does a lot of good for a lot of people, doesn't work fantastically in rice; we're still playing with it. There are many different things you can do to create more sustainable, more climate smart farming practices and we have to have a suite of options that we support rather than narrowly focusing on those that we might just be comfortable with understanding.”
Future
Rice Stuff climate episodes will look into climate change and global markets, and how to effectively communicate what the industry is doing on the topic.
“We still want this to be a dialogue with the industry and our listeners,” Klein said. “I hope folks will tweet at us or leave us messages or questions on our website that we can cover in future episodes. You can do that right from our website
www.thericestuffpodcast.com – ‘Talk to Us.’”
New episodes of
The Rice Stuff are published on the second and fourth Tuesday of every month and can be found on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher.