In 2020, U.S. federal farm subsidies reached $46 billion. This truly staggering level of taxpayer spending constituted nearly 40% of U.S. farm income.

The billions spent on the farm sector today are neither protecting the future of U.S. agriculture nor preserving the traditional family farm. But that investment could actually provide a social compact that might steer us away from climate catastrophe.

U.S. agriculture certainly needs help. And despite all this aid program, farm bankruptcies were up 8%. Meanwhile, the climate is overheating with record-breaking temperatures and megadroughts and megafires scorching the American West. Our capital- and machinery-intensive system of industrial agriculture remains a key driver of this existential threat, through continual land cultivation, fertilizer use and livestock emissions.

But the heavily subsidized farm sector could provide on-the-ground solutions to slow the impacts of climate change.

We are living in Dust Bowl-like times that require bold action. This is why the Farm Bill, which funds the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s $100 billion annual budgets, was formed in the first place. We need the equivalent of a modern-day agricultural moon shot — a plan to transition the Corn Belt to a carbon belt. Hundreds of millions of acres now planted in corn and soybeans could provide year-round ground cover with permanent plantings that can pull carbon out of the atmosphere and store it in deep-rooted plants in the soil.

The billions we spend on crop insurance for marginally productive acreage could be put to better use with permanent carbon sequestering plantings of grasses, trees and other native species. Cover crops can protect hundreds of millions of acres during the winter and between rotations to help build resilience in the soil and reduce the need for energy-intensive fertilizers.

Research into perennial grain crops (which don’t require annual tilling of the soil) must also be dramatically increased. Livestock raised on the land, rather than in methane-spewing factories, should receive far more support. And we could trade a majority of our surplus corn and soybeans to other countries to keep rainforests from being cleared for feed grain monocultures.

Establishing a carbon belt across the U.S. heartland is as essential as the moon landing was 60 years ago. We still have just one planet. Ensuring its long-term habitability is arguably the greatest challenge before us.

Daniel Imhoff is the author of “The Farm Bill: A Citizen’s Guide, CAFO: The Tragedy of Industrial Animal Factories” and “Farming with the Wild.” This column was produced for the Progressive Media Project.