Thinking Beyond Carbon, Policy Recommendations for U.S. Agricultural Resilience
February 22, 2026
Centering carbon sequestration in agricultural management may not be enough. Instead, focusing on overall soil health will meet more stakeholder goals and create a more resilient U.S. agricultural system. In a new peer-reviewed agricultural policy brief published in Frontiers open-source journal, current and former Point Blue staff joined with colleagues from Carbon180, University of Oklahoma, Oregon State University, University of Leeds, Leeds (United Kingdom), Colorado State University, Stony Brook University, and University of Colorado to lay out a roadmap for centering soil health in U.S. agricultural policy going forward.
The authors explain that carbon sequestration is one of the many benefits of soil health. The other benefits include supporting physical properties (like increasing the capacity of soils to hold water), chemical properties (like buffering pH), and biological properties (such as microbial biodiversity and nutrient cycling). Broadly speaking, healthy soils are living ecosystems that sustain plants, animals, and humans. When soils are healthy, agricultural lands support communities through food production, provide viable economic opportunities for farmers, and enhance ecosystem services such as supporting biodiversity and climate change mitigation. However, the capacity of soils to sequester carbon varies and a focus on carbon sequestration over soil health can lead to biodiversity loss and other negative ecological outcomes.
In order to get there, the authors highlight policy as a critical piece of the puzzle and lay out three major policy recommendations to get firmly on the path to agricultural health and resilience, in a way that puts farmers and producers first and includes economy and ecology.
The first is to structure financial incentives that support adoption of soil health practices and improve long-term agricultural resilience. This includes supporting conservation programs that are already centering soil health and showing success, such as Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP), or the California Healthy Soils Program. It also includes introducing new legislation that allows producers to financially benefit from their participation in healthy soils programs.
Second, invest in long-term monitoring networks to understand ecosystem and economic impacts and use monitoring outcomes to guide management regionally. The authors recommend building on and creating more programs like the bipartisan, bicameral Advancing Research for Agricultural Soil Health Impacts Act (HR 4865, SB 2582) in 2025. Along with supporting existing and new nation-wide, regionally specific monitoring networks, the authors recommend improving data access for producers as well. The authors also recommend supporting public-private partnerships like the Sustainable Agriculture Initiative Platform to come to an agreement around practices that address resilience across supply chains.
And third, integrate social science into soil health management to improve equity and culturally relevant support systems. The authors point to social science research showing that producers most often turn to peer-to-peer networks to get information and access resources. Therefore, it would be strategic for policy to support programs and structures for information sharing in this context. Additionally, policies should be set up to deliver a menu of options that can adapt to individual producer goals and needs. And in order to address barriers to access funding for historically underserved agricultural communities, on the ground trusted organizations should be leveraged to disseminate resources and practices. Lastly, simplifying the application and enrollment processes will lower the barrier to participation and increase impact in the area of soil resilience.
To summarize, this brief encourages policymakers to think more collaboratively and inclusively about the wide swath of producer needs and barriers to access resources, leverage and grow programs that are working, and most of all think bigger. Think about overall system resilience.