Climate Change & Agriculture Policy Resource Center

The effects of climate change are becoming clear across rural America. Rising average temperatures, shifting precipitation patterns, changing growing seasons, increasingly frequent and severe weather events, and rising sea levels are making it more difficult to grow food, fuel, and fiber. These difficulties will only intensify over time.

However, farmers and ranchers hold immense power to address this crisis—as many already are. They have implemented conservation practices that build soil health, which make the land more resilient to extreme weather and help to sequester carbon. They are also producing renewable energy, reducing the reliance on fossil fuels.

These efforts are often expensive, technically demanding, and time consuming. To make on-farm climate action as accessible as possible, farmers and ranchers need financial and technical support, strong policy mechanisms, and robust climate research.

National Farmers Union is working hard to make sure all these needs are met.

On this page, you’ll find resources for family farmers and ranchers to advocate for policies that will support their efforts to mitigate and adapt to the effects of climate change, details on the latest actions by Congress, the administration and other actors on climate policy, and information on existing programs that could be used and built on to ensure a more economically and environmentally sustainable future for agriculture and rural America.