We examined their track records and party platforms to explore the approaches each might take if elected, and how those might impact food and agriculture.
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We examined their track records and party platforms to explore the approaches each might take if elected, and how those might impact food and agriculture.
September 24, 2024
A version of this article originally appeared in The Deep Dish, our members-only newsletter. Become a member today and get the next issue directly in your inbox.
As Kamala Harris and Donald Trump campaign for the November election, farmers across the U.S. grapple with extreme and unprecedented weather: blistering heatwaves, severe drought, explosive wildfires, devastating storms, and deadly floods. Climate policies have not been a huge point of discussion on the campaign trail, but the next president’s approach to the changing climate will have massive implications, affecting everything from biodiversity to human migration to farmers’ ability to produce food.
The United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) sounded a final alarm for the planet in March 2023, emphasizing that we need to make “rapid and far-reaching transitions” across the board, including in food and agriculture, within the current decade. The report warns that as the climate warms and farmers face increasing challenges, food insecurity and supply instability will rise.
“There is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a livable and sustainable future for all,” the authors said. “The choices and actions implemented in this decade will have impacts now and for thousands of years.”
Details on the presidential candidates’ specific climate policies remain scant, but their track records, party platforms, and election-season statements point to the sort of approach each might take if elected. And they could not be more different. When it comes to energy production, the largest emitter of greenhouse gases—and the regulations that shape it and a number of other climate-related policies—the two candidates’ opposing approaches would have wildly different implications for the state of the climate—and the resulting stability of the food system.
The 2024 Democratic platform acknowledges the climate crisis as “an existential threat to future generations” and reflects that priority with robust support for clean energy and climate-friendly regulation. Meanwhile, to the Republican mantra of “drill, baby, drill,” Trump has called climate change a hoax and promised to achieve “energy dominance” while eliminating regulation and undoing the Democrats’ progress toward clean energy.
Numerous climate and environment advocacy groups have endorsed Harris for president. Meanwhile, agribusiness interests have poured their money into the GOP.
President Joe Biden’s administration has weathered mixed reviews on climate. For the past six years, the U.S. has produced more crude oil than any other country, and the Biden administration approved thousands of permits for drilling and fracking on federal land, like the Alaska Willow oil drilling project. And while Harris called for a ban on fracking in 2019 during a presidential debate on CNN, she has since changed her position.
Still, the Biden-Harris administration set the goal of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050 and made unprecedented investments in renewable energy. The $1.6 trillion Inflation Reduction Act (IRA)—which includes $369 billion for clean-energy projects and decarbonizing the energy and transportation sectors—is the most aggressive piece of climate legislation in American history. Harris cast the tie-breaking vote to pass it.
Additionally, under Biden and Harris, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized strong pollution standards for cars and fossil fuel-fired power plants.
Though Harris has not made climate a focus of her 2024 campaign—and has not revealed specifics about her climate agenda this year—her campaign has said she plans to build on Biden’s climate legacy. Some look at her Climate Plan for the People, which she unveiled during her run in the 2020 primaries, as an indication of where her priorities might lie. The plan called for a $10 trillion public and private investment in climate action over the next decade and included funding clean energy, electrifying transportation, and pursuing climate-smart agriculture.
In her previous roles, Harris has held big polluters to account and supported bold climate action, often framing the crisis through the lens of environmental justice, recognizing that poor and minority communities bear the brunt of pollution and looking to reverse the inequities. As California’s attorney general, Harris sued the Obama administration to stop offshore fracking in the Santa Barbara Channel and amassed $50 million in settlements from lawsuits against fossil fuel companies including Chevron, BP, ConocoPhillips, and Phillips 66. And as a U.S. Senator, in 2019, she joined Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) in co-sponsoring the Green New Deal, a plan to transition the country to clean energy while providing job guarantees and high-quality healthcare.
“Kamala Harris has been a driving force in delivering the strongest climate action in history. She’s ready to build on those gains from day one as president,” said Manish Bapna, president and CEO of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) Action Fund, in a statement. “Harris grasps the urgency and scale of the challenge…. She’ll raise climate ambition to make sure we confront the climate crisis in a way that makes the country more inclusive, more economically competitive, and more energy secure.”
The Biden-Harris administration has also cracked down on corporate consolidation. In many parts of the food system, a few massive companies dominate—the four largest meatpackers control 85 percent of all beef cattle in the U.S., for instance. Some contend that consolidated corporate power positions companies to successfully lobby against regulation that limits air and water pollution and see reigning in corporate power as a vital step in pursuing climate-friendly policies. Biden signed an executive order in July 2021 to promote competition in the American economy, including the meat industry.
While Harris’ running mate, Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota, supported the creation of the now-defunct Keystone XL pipeline project, he generally has an extremely climate-friendly record as well. Last year, he signed a law that requires state power plants to transition to 100 percent climate-friendly energy—like wind and solar power—by the year 2040, eliminating gas and coal-fired power plants. And during the 2023 legislative session, he supported state Democrats in passing around 40 other climate-friendly initiatives.
Trump, on the other hand, denies the threat of climate change and makes inaccurate claims about sea level rise. In 2017, he withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Climate Deal, the pre-eminent international agreement to stave off climate change. (Biden rejoined the Agreement on his first day in office.)
As president, Trump dismantled the agencies responsible for protecting the environment and climate, like the EPA, and rolled back more than 100 environmental rules. He also weakened limits on CO2 emissions from power plants and vehicles and removed protections on more than half of the country’s wetlands.
Kip Tom, an Indiana farmer who served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations food and agriculture programs during Trump’s presidency and who currently leads the Farmers and Ranchers for Trump Coalition, said at a Farm Foundation forum in early September that the Biden-Harris administration hurt farmers in many ways, including with regulations like those issued under the Clean Water and Endangered Species acts.
“We have collapsing farm incomes. We’ve got a growing trade deficit. We have the tax policies, which are a threat to our industry,” Tom said. “We have the overreach of some agencies, agencies that should be working to help us bring these new innovations to market, yet they slow us down.”
Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), has acknowledged the problem of climate change in the past, but he changed his views when seeking Trump’s support in his bid for Senate. Since then, he has denied the role of humans in driving climate change, championed the oil and gas industries, and opposed the development of alternative energy sources.
While Harris emphasized her support of the oil and gas industries during the presidential debate, the 2024 Democratic platform calls for a continuation of the “clean energy boom” the Biden-Harris administration launched with the IRA. This includes developing solar, wind, batteries, and other clean technologies, modernizing the electricity grid, and running the American Climate Corps workforce training and service initiative. Recognizing that agriculture sector produces 10 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, the platform sets forth the goal of making “our farm sector the world’s first to reach net-zero emissions by 2050.”
Sheep graze under solar panels. (Photo CC-licensed by AgriSolar Clearinghouse)
The platform also supports using federal agencies to set and enforce regulations that protect the environment and combat climate change. In addition to regulating water and air pollution and making polluters pay, Democrats plan to use federal agencies to encourage climate-smart investment. And, it targets these investments “with the goal of delivering 40 percent of the overall benefits to disadvantaged and frontline communities,” or those who are most impacted by climate change.
With the help of IRA funding, for instance, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is paying farmers to adopt climate-smart practices like reducing tillage and planting cover crops. According to the Democrats’ 2024 platform, more than 80,000 farms covering 75 million acres have adopted these practices already. The agency also funds projects that gather data on the efficacy of the efforts.
Harris has not detailed where she stands on breaking up corporate power, though her economic policy includes blocking unfair mergers and a federal ban on grocery-store price gouging. Harris has also tapped Brian Deese, Biden’s top economic advisor, who drafted the actions addressing concentration in the meatpacking industry, to join her campaign.
Trump plans to pursue an agenda that is friendly to the fossil-fuel industry. His support for oil and gas companies, which he provided with $25 billion in tax benefits during his presidency, would likely continue. “Under President Trump, the U.S. became the Number One Producer of Oil and Natural Gas in the World,” states the GOP Platform.
Project 2025, the roadmap for a conservative presidency developed by the Heritage Foundation, a think tank that has shaped Republican administrations dating back to Ronald Reagan, also expresses a commitment to “unleashing all of America’s energy resources.” (While Trump has tried to distance himself from the Project 2025 as it has faced scrutiny, many of its authors are his former advisers and shaped policies during his presidency.)
Trump is expected to double down on his deregulatory agenda during a second term. The former president plans to undo many of Biden’s climate and environmental protections and dismantle the IRA by repealing sections that promote electric vehicles and offshore wind projects. (Since the IRA passed two years ago, Republicans have voted to repeal it 42 times.) He has also proposed eliminating key regulations for liquefied natural gas. At a dinner with oil executives at Mar-a-Lago in April, the former president suggested if they contributed $1 billion to his campaign, he would roll back Biden-Harris environmental regulations.
Drill rig working to drill a natural gas well to be fracked next to the Red Hawk Elementary School. Elementary school is the building behind the drill rig in the photo.
If elected, Trump told the American Farm Bureau Federation, “I will slash regulations that stifle American agriculture and make everything more expensive.”
Project 2025 spells out similar deregulatory plans. It calls for demolishing the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration and the National Weather Service, which it describes as “the main drivers of climate change alarm.” (During his previous term, Trump required the term “climate change” be removed from government websites.)
Criticizing the Biden-administration’s EPA for pursuing a global, climate-themed agenda “against the will of Congress,” the document also advocates for shrinking the agency’s power, which would include eliminating its office of environmental justice and civil rights: “EPA’s structure and mission should be greatly circumscribed to reflect the principles of cooperative federalism and limited government,” it says.
The conservative plan criticizes the Biden-Harris USDA for encouraging “climate-smart agricultural practices” and says the next administration should “denounce efforts to place ancillary issues like climate change ahead of food productivity and affordability.” Along those lines, it recommends eliminating conservation programs like the USDA’s Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), which pays farmers to stop farming on low-quality pieces of land to help reduce runoff, improve biodiversity, and hold carbon. And it calls for the president to issue an executive order that removes references to “transforming the food system” from all USDA literature.
On the corporate power front, Trump suggested to oil executive donors at a fundraising event in May that if he becomes president, he will fast-track their merger deals with the Federal Trade Commission.
It should be noted that implementing any of the candidates’ plans would require Congressional approval, which may or may not be achievable with the current configuration of the House and Senate.
As of early September, agribusiness interests had donated $9.9 million to the 2024 Trump campaign and only $2.7 million to Harris.
“President Trump has a strong record of advancing policies to strengthen American agriculture,” Alabama FarmPAC president Jimmy Parnell told the conservative Alabama news website 1819 News. “His administration reduced burdensome regulations, held trade partners accountable, lowered energy costs, and invested in rural economic development.”
Meanwhile, the League of Conservation Voters, the NRDC Action Fund, the Sierra Club, Clean Water Action, the youth-led Sunrise Movement, and a number of other climate-focused groups have endorsed Harris for president. And in August, a group of climate organizations announced a $55 million ad campaign in her support.
“Kamala Harris’s record provides a stark contrast with Donald Trump and the far-right, pro-polluter Project 2025,” said Wenonah Hauter, founder and executive director of Food and Water Action, in a statement. “She has long championed bold clean water legislation, and the Biden-Harris administration provided a dramatic boost to clean energy, tackled corporate consolidation, and passed an infrastructure law that will provide much-needed resources to protecting clean water.”
Harris’ positions do not yet go far enough to tackle the existential threats to our food, water, and climate, says Hauter.“But with a President Harris, we will have a chance to build the political power to move the bold climate initiatives we need.”
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