As reported by the Virginia Business, the United States Department of Agriculture awarded Virginia Tech’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences $80 million in grants. The university will use at least $54 million to fund a pilot program for farmers to practice climate-friendly methods in an effort to curb greenhouse gasses.
According to the article, the grant is the largest in Virginia Tech’s history. It will be distributed among nearly 5,200 producers, covering 600,000 acres in Virginia, North Dakota, Arkansas and Minnesota.
The grant will be evenly divided across the four states, totaling $13.5 million for each state, as stated by Tom Thompson, the principal investigator of the project and associate dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
According to VTx, farmers in the pilot program could decrease the country’s agricultural emissions by 55 percent and total emissions by 8 percent after 10 years. The project will also focus on enhancing agricultural productivity to help feed the world’s increasing population.
The program will implement climate-friendly crop, rice and livestock practices.
Virginia Tech’s lead partner on the project is the Rural Investment to Protect Our Environment (RIPE), which Thompson also said was responsible for creating the pilot concept.
In addition to RIPE, the university partnered with the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation, Virginia Cooperative Extension and Virginia State University to execute the program.
“We are proud to lead this effort that gives agricultural producers incentives to enact climate-smart practices and the financial means to do so,” Thompson said. “This is a watershed program that helps the agricultural industry be a leader in addressing climate change.”
from
https://bentoncountynewsnow.com/virginia-tech-receives-80-million-grant-to-combat-climate-change-virginia-tech-collegiate-times/
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