LINCOLN- The Biden administration plans to distribute more than $3 billion to fund projects that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions and sequester carbon in agriculture and forestry. This nearly triples the initial commitment that was announced in February.

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack said, "This is a really, really important day for American agriculture, I just hope everybody fully appreciates the significance of what we’re doing here.”

The program is being funded through the Commodity Credit Corporation, which has been historically used to support farmers with loans and payments and to fund conservation programs of the farm bill.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has said it can use the CCC to fund the new climate program without congressional approval because it will “aid in the expansion of markets for agricultural commodities,” a provision of its charter. A key goal of the program is to create markets for climate-friendly products.

The initial selected projects will get a total of about $2.8 billion over the course of five years, and the companies, universities, conservation groups and others that have proposed them will contribute a total of about $1.4 billion, Vilsack said. Funding for a second group of projects is expected later this year.

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