Agriculture

US agricultural finance for climate resilience

Climate change is a daily presence in the work of farmers, ranchers and farmworkers. In 2018, primary agricultural production (and forestry) accounted for about 10.5% of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) and offset about 11.6% of all U.S.

Climate Risk Ignored in Agricultural Finance Poses Hazards to Farmers and Rural Communities

MINNEAPOLIS—Today, the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) released a paper emphasizing the urgent need for U.S.

Agricultural Finance for Climate Resilience

U.S. agricultural financial policy and institutions, both public and private, have not yet adapted to climate change. Instead, Congress responds to more frequent extreme weather events with larger and increasingly frequent ad hoc disaster payments and increasing subsidies for private crop insurance from taxpayer funds. These short-term responses are not sustainable fiscally, economically or environmentally. 

Senate releases climate policy report — what does it say about agriculture?

Earlier this summer, the House of Representatives released a long-awaited report charting a policy path on climate change. Last week, the Senate released its own set of ideas.

Pandemic Response to Protect and Increase Resilience in the Food and Farm System

The coronavirus pandemic has exposed and exacerbated vulnerabilities and inequities in our food system, disproportionately harming tribal, immigrant and communities of color, farmworkers and food system workers, small and mid-scale farmers, historically underserved, tribal and beginning family farmers and ranchers, and low-income consumers, including children.

[WATCH] NSAC Farmer Climate Letter Delivery

More than 2,000 farmers across the country, including over 100 farmers in Minnesota, have signed onto a letter organized by the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, of which IATP is a member. The letter calls for federal action on climate change, which is impacting farmers in the form of extreme temperatures, precipitation, drought and storms.

Farmers and Ranchers Deliver Letter to the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) and farmers and ranchers from across the country delivered a letter to the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis (Select Committee), urging Congress to support and invest in farming and rural communities to address the climate crisis. 

CFTC proposes allowing self-regulation of automated trading

Imagine that you are a large institutional investor with billions of dollars to invest. Would you keep your money in the stock market, whose record high prices are fueled by an unprecedented amount of cheap money provided to Wall Street by the Federal Reserve System? Would you buy bonds, whose skyrocketing prices are likewise driven by Fed largesse?

Comment on the CFTC Principles of Electronic Trading

The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (“IATP”) appreciates the opportunity to comment on the above captioned NPRM. IATP last wrote to the Commission concerning electronic trading on May 1, 2017, regarding Regulation Automated Trading (“Reg AT”).   Overview   

“Replacing hunger with malnutrition": Former UN official calls out failing African Green Revolution

It’s been nearly fifty years since Frances Moore Lappé reminded us in her seminal work, “Diet for a Small Planet,” that hunger is not caused by a scarcity of food, it is caused by a scarcity of power. Economist Amartya Sen won a Nobel Prize more than twenty years ago for showing that famine was rarely caused by a lack of food.