At the California Climate Hub, we were excited by the recent news that Governor Jerry Brown allocated $7.5 million in funding to the Healthy Soils Initiative. This initiative aims to build “soil organic matter that can increase carbon sequestration and reduce overall greenhouse gas emissions” on California’s farms and ranches It is a collaboration between various state agencies led by the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA). CDFA announced the news in September 2016, and the California Climate and Agriculture Network (CalCAN) analyzed the legislation in a recent blog post.

The USDA Climate Hubs aim to facilitate both climate mitigation and climate adaptation, especially where those two goals converge to provide long-term benefits for land owners. We look forward to working with CDFA and other agencies to realize the goals of the Healthy Soils Initiative. We will explore these synergies at the California Climate Hub’s upcoming workshop on Building Blocks of Climate-Smart Agriculture, tentatively scheduled for February 2017 in the Davis/Sacramento area – stay tuned!