OMAHA (DTN) -- While the incoming Trump administration will look to scale back U.S. commitment to global climate initiatives, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said that would risk putting U.S. farmers at a global disadvantage when American farmers should be championing their climate-smart efforts.

Vilsack returned late last week from the United Nations Conference of the Parties (COP 29) in Baku, Azerbaijan. COP 29 was marked by disputes over how much wealthy countries will pledge to help developing countries as well as what role the U.S. will play in talks over the next four years.

In an interview with DTN, Vilsack said U.S. agriculture already has put a lot of investment in reducing greenhouse gases and making ag more resilient to extreme weather. Those efforts will continue.

"I understand there's a lot of uncertainty in any new administration and a lot of angst connected with it, but in terms of actual activities and investment and direction, I think it's not as dire as perhaps some people may think," Vilsack said.

OPPORTUNITY OVER DOOMSDAY

As the outgoing Agriculture secretary often likes to highlight, focus on climate change shouldn't just be on potential dire outcomes, but the opportunities that can be created for farmers and ranchers to earn more money for their farming practices.

"Instead of the doomsday approach, what we've been able to do is say, look, before you go down that road, you have to look at the opportunity side," Vilsack said. "It creates multiple income sources for farmers, which is critically important to the 90% of farmers that are having a tough time making it just from the farm," Vilsack said.

There is a case to be made that supporting climate-smart practices is fiscally conservative and saves money over time, he said. Practices such as no-till farming and planting cover crops help improve the resiliency of that farm.

"You won't, at the end of the day, [have] the same level of disaster that you could have had, which means less disaster assistance, you won't have quite the crop loss that you would have from droughts of any size because your soil is healthier and more resilient, so you have less potential crop insurance payments and you've got the additional opportunity of more income coming into farmers which may lessen the need for the kind of support systems that keep some of these farms afloat when they have difficult prices because of a surplus of commodities on the market," the secretary said.

SOLUTIONS FROM THE LAND

Ernie Shea, executive director of Solutions From the Land, also attended COP 29 with a handful of U.S. farmers. The group hosted events on water, renewable fuels, bioeconomy and invasive species. Shea said the discussion on the spread of invasive species showed countries were concerned about how some of these migrating pests were affecting farmers.