Sponsors (6)
The bill invests federal resources to create standardized soil‑carbon measurement tools, funding, and assistance that help farmers improve soil health and access markets while increasing federal spending and imposing participation burdens, measurement uncertainty, and risks of biased or uneven implementation.
Farmers, ranchers, and land managers gain access to standardized, federally supported tools, methods, funding, and multilingual technical assistance to measure and report soil carbon — enabling participation in carbon markets, conservation programs, and improved on‑farm decision making.
Farmers and rural communities benefit from funded on‑farm demonstrations and promotion of soil carbon practices that can improve soil health, productivity, climate resilience, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Researchers, public agencies, and policymakers receive standardized, interoperable soil carbon data and scheduled public reports that improve research quality, policy decisionmaking, and federal transparency on soil carbon trends.
Taxpayers face increased recurring federal spending (multiple new authorizations and appropriations across programs) that may divert funds from other priorities.
Farmers and small producers may incur administrative burdens, time costs, and out‑of‑pocket expenses to authorize sampling, measure and report soil carbon, or meet multi‑year demonstration commitments, limiting participation for resource‑constrained operations.
Producers and program participants risk inaccurate crediting or program decisions because model estimates and measurement approaches include uncertainty and may not fully capture on‑farm variation.
Based on analysis of 6 sections of legislative text.
Directs USDA to standardize soil carbon measurement, build a national soil carbon inventory and predictive models, expand research support and on-farm demonstrations, and fund related work.
Introduced August 1, 2025 by Eric Sorensen · Last progress August 1, 2025
Requires the U.S. Department of Agriculture to create standardized, science-based methods to directly measure soil carbon, build a repeated national soil carbon inventory and sampling program, and develop predictive modeling tools that estimate how land management affects greenhouse gases and soil carbon. It also expands competitive research grant authority to support soil carbon measurement work, funds on-farm demonstration projects and technical assistance (including multilingual guidance), and authorizes modest annual funding to support these activities.