Promote climate-smart, environmentally sustainable practices 

If decision makers do not adequately address climate change, our food system will be negatively affected in myriad ways. Fires, floods, droughts, and severe storms will all take a toll on food production, processing, distribution, consumption, and waste management.

Of critical importance to note, the emissions profile for agriculture and fisheries differs from that of the economy as a whole. Appropriate management of agriculture and fisheries is also a critical piece of ensuring that our land, plants, and oceans act as “carbon sinks,” – i.e., things that absorb more carbon from the atmosphere than they release. Sustainable crop and livestock management can greatly increase carbon sequestration in agricultural soils. In fact, if 100% of Rhode Island farms incorporated better management practices that had the potential to remove carbon from the atmosphere including non-till, legume cover cropping, and spreading more compost, it would remove 94,902 (MTCO2e) from the atmosphere or be the equivalent of taking 20,500 cars off the road annually. In our oceans, seaweed and algae appear to play an important role in carbon sequestration.In addition to burying a fraction of their own production, blue carbon sinks reduce flow, alter turbulence and attenuate wave action, thereby promoting sedimentation and reducing sediment resuspension. Kelp farming has been cited as one of the most helpful carbon sequestration opportunities available. However, changing agricultural and business practices to be more climate friendly is not always easy. The challenges have limited the potential good that the food sector can do for the climate.

The 2021 Act on Climate provides an opportunity to make substantial changes to food system climate impacts. However, in order for this to happen, food systems need to be explicitly included in all climate plans and addressed explicitly in climate legislation.