American Sustainable Business Institute, Inc.: The Growing GRASS Project
The Growing GRASS & Climate-Smart Value-Added U.S. Commodity Markets Project (Growing GRASS Project) will help U.S. beef and bison producers optimize total value from their regenerative grazing operations through lowered costs of verification, market access, and increased value-added markets that more fully utilize the whole animal, along with incentives for climate-smart grazing systems that reduce costs, increase resiliency, and deliver environmental and climate benefits.
Farm Eligibility
Jun-23
All US states except Alaska
Prescribed Grazing
Does not specify
Money Matters
At least 1000 producers will receive research participation payments for providing program evaluation data to research teams. These payments have been budgeted at $25 per hour x 20 hours for a total of $500 per producer per year, except Year 5, when it is $25/hour x 10 hours totaling $250 per producer.
During the pilot phase, payments will be $30/head of qualifying beef or bison.
To be eligible, producers will agree to specific terms, including that they are not currently receiving and have not historically received payments for the same work/outcomes from USDA
Not applicable
Contracting Info
The Partnership for Climate Smart Commodities program is a five year program starting in February 2023.
All projects are required to include plans to (1) quantify greenhouse gas (GHG) benefits and (2) monitor/verify those benefits over time.
Does not specify
Growing GRASS funding and project activities will support producer research involvement and verification of the grazing systems through on-farm/ranch inspections tied to value-added markets, including soil testing, as well as market subsidies and technical assistance/education.
Technical Info
American Sustainable Business Institute, Inc., partnered with Roots of Change, American Grassfed Association, Other Half Processing SBC, Pure Strategies, IC-FOODS, Autocase, UC Davis Food Systems Labs, Textile Exchange, Regenerative Rising, Lookin.to
GRASS uses information gathered from on-farm/ranch inspections conducted by grassfed, animal welfare, organic and regenerative markets to verify the regenerative equivalency claims. As long as the inspection verifies 100% grassfed/finished, regeneratively managed grazing, animal welfare considerations, biodiversity protection and involvement in soil testing and/or other regenerative “outcome” verifications, that 3rd party inspection and the required information provided by the producers can be used to access GRASS markets.
GRASS is a benchmarking/ standards verification tool developed by Other Half Processing (OHP), Timberland and Pure Strategies to provide Timberland and other buyers of hides/leather with a verification and sourcing system for regeneratively raised attributes. Through its equivalency approach to verification, GRASS provides Timberland and other market partners confidence in the regenerative product traceability for their supply chain.
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