While federal interest in regenerative agriculture may be stalled, healthy soil is first and foremost in a slew of state legislation.

Last week, something unusual happened: A group of United States senators talked about soil health. During the Senate Agriculture Committee’s climate change hearing, the first such public discussion in a decade, a soybean farmer named Matthew Rezac told them why keeping healthy soil—not just reducing greenhouse gas emissions—was a key part of what farmers could do to cool a warming planet.

“What we are doing with soil health can help with weather variability and make my farm more resilient at the same time,” he said. “We might not always see it or talk about it as a climate issue. I know the weather is changing, but I try to control what I can control.”

But despite the historic significance of Rezac’s federal testimony, the real legislative action on soil health is happening in the states.

Already this year, state lawmakers across the country have introduced 39 soil health bills. Overall, in the past two legislative sessions, 250 soil health bills have been introduced in statehouses and Washington, D.C., representing a surprisingly broad momentum for what was once a fringe movement, according to a recent analysis by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). The bills look a little different from each other, and all have different justifications, but they all focus on soil health.

As climate change has come to the fore, so has the notion that farmers can help pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and store it in their soil. This is done essentially by growing more, and doing less to disturb their fields—a practice known broadly as regenerative agriculture. Planting trees, cover cropping, no-till farming, and rotational grazing were once in the relatively niche purview of environmental activists and advocates. But as epochal floods and droughts sweep farmland away, the notion that those techniques could actually help keep the land together—and make for more productive farming—is picking up steam.