Industry Insights with Laura Wood - Agricultural feedstocks, SAF policy, and sustainable farming
Laura Wood
President
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LWP Consulting
In this interview Laura Wood, a natural resource and sustainability policy expert, and speaker at the upcoming Sustainable Aviation Futures North America Congress, shares her insight on how SAF and agriculture are linked, sustainability practices utilized by farmers, and what needs to happen with policy to support agriculture in scaling SAF.
Tell us a little bit about yourself and your experience:
Laura Wood is the President of LWP Consulting, a federal agriculture policy advisory firm. By championing issues across the food and agriculture sector, supporting rural America, and engaging in production agriculture herself, she draws on regulatory experience in natural resource and sustainability policy nationwide. Having been raised on an active farm in Kansas, she has an instinct for what works and what doesn’t. Ms. Wood is an attorney and attended Kansas State University and George Washington University Law School, where she taught American Politics as adjunct faculty in the GWU Undergraduate Political Science Department.
Where does agriculture fit into the SAF landscape, or vice versa?
The agricultural economy and SAF are inextricably linked, as the world seeks meaningful solutions to the climate crisis. It is obvious that there is no one solution, and technologically viable alternatives need to be supported and promoted. Partnering across industries creates an opportunity to dramatically reduce Carbon Intensity (CI) in the fuel supply chain from input suppliers of feedstock. This should account for increasing yield, managing residual biomass, and adding technology-neutral conservation practices on-farm, advanced by strong capabilities in measurement, monitoring, reporting and verification that were not available even five years ago. Moving toward circular economies and shifting production systems means crediting conservation outcomes. While the 40BSAF-GREET model uses a bundled practice-based option that does not account for the potential in the existing Argonne GREET model let alone future updates, it opens the door to a step-change on the landscape that can underpin airline goals and reduce costs of SAF. We are not there yet.
How engaged with sustainability practices are farmers? Is there a drive to incorporate Climate Smart Agriculture practices to begin producing feedstocks?
Farmers are the original conservationists, whose land stewardship ethic drives long-term viability and resource consumption. Since the Dust Bowl, the federal government has incentivized conservation through practice payments. Farmers widely accept and adopt these payments. In fact, the IRA also increased funding for USDA practice payments by over $18 billion, and USDA instituted a $3 billion novel Climate-Smart Commodities Partnerships Program. While implementing a government prioritization, the farming community can be skeptical and needs reassurance and engagement, but it can be done. Over this past century, the American agricultural system stepped up to meet food production challenges in a world facing significant economic, political and climate constraints. Now, the system must manage for environmental degradation and resource limitations more carefully.
In the United States, 387 weather and climate disasters have exceeded $1 billion since 1980; the total cost of these 291 events exceeds $2.7 trillion, according to NOAA.[1] YaleEnvironment360 cites, more than a third of farmland in the Corn Belt – nearly 100 million acres – has lost its carbon-rich topsoil due to erosion.[2]
[1] Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters: Overview. NOAA (accessed 15 April 2024) https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/billions/.
[1] One-Third of Farmland in the U.S. Corn Belt has Lost Its Topsoil.” YaleEnvironment360 Digest 18 February 2021. https://e360.yale.edu/digest/one-third-of-farmland-in-the-u-s-corn-belt-has-lost-its-topsoil.
Moving from practice-based payments to outcomes-based incentive structures is key to changing the paradigm. 45Z-GREET is anticipated to employ a practice-based approach; at a minimum, it should but does not yet include more conservation practices because the American landscape does not utilize one-size-fits-all anything. Each acre is unique. 45Z-GREET must safeguard flexibility for existing and future advancements, become technology neutral, and incentivize farmer-forward innovation. If Argonne GREET has evaluated a technology or practice and assigned a value to it, then it should be made available as an option for farmers in 45(Z). 40(B) is far too limiting.
Do you see the new 40BSAF-GREET 2024 Model as an opportunity, or a challenge? Can the all or nothing approach work?
40BSAF-GREET cracked the door open to a wider conversation. USDA has a rich history driving incremental change without managing for an all or nothing approach to conservation. For example, the 40BSAF-GREET model requires a bundled set of practices that includes no-till. Why not precision till? We have sensing technology to assess types of soil disturbance in real time with yield data informing residue management with automated equipment to optimize tillage. We have enough information to manage for reduced-till, and doing so further decreases fuel consumption. Conservation happens incrementally with the grace of Mother Nature, and we need to credit for what meaningfully helps the climate crisis. Other examples range from breakthrough products changing yield calculations for the Argonne GREET model to new carbon storage methods to better understandings on the benefits of new products through USDA’s soil carbon monitoring workstream. Agriculture is a high-tech industry.
How can policy support farmers to enter the SAF market, and therefore drive the scaling of SAF?
To reach scale, DOE can work with USDA to advance a broader, technology neutral approach to reducing CI. When a goal is set, farmers meet and exceed it. As the history of agriculture has repeatedly demonstrated, innovators step up to calibrate society's needs with available resources. Without a compelling goal set for reducing CI in the production agriculture system, climate benefits will not be realized on the ground. Therefore, the full potential for airlines to profit from a cleaner fuel supply chain will not be maximized. If we are wrong about the precise agricultural climate solutions incentivized through these tax provisions, the worst thing that happens are additional co-benefits in water quality and quantity and increased potential for biodiversity at a time when resource limitations are front and center.