Farmers for Soil Health (FSH)

Mar-23

DE, IL, IN, IA, KS, KY, MD, MN, MI, MO, NC, ND, NE, NY, OH, PA, SD, TN, VA, WI

• Cover Crops

Farmers who have existing cover crop acres may also receive a SIP payment of $2/acre (200-acre cap) to register those acres in the marketplace platform and to participate in additional market opportunities.

$25 per acre year 1. $15 per acre year 2, and $10 per acre year 3

$50 per acre over the first three years in the program, for new practices. For existing cover crop, $2 per acre.

Farmers for Soil Health (FSH) Transition Incentive Payments (TIPs) can be stacked with other AMP project payments if they are paying for something other than the cover crop practice. FSH TIPs cannot be stacked with USDA NRCS cover crop cost-share payments, such as through the Environmental Quality Incentives rogram, or EQIP. FSH TIPs can be stacked with other state or private (non-federal) incentives and cost-share opportunities.

Not applicable

The Partnership for Climate Smart Commodities program was a five year program starting in February 2023.

During enrollment, farm field boundaries, crop rotation, use of cover crops, soils, and other information will be prepopulated for the farmer in the digital platform. Participating farmers will need to self-certify the following information: 1. Their USDA farm, tract and field numbers. 2. For Transition Incentive Payments (TIPs), farmers must verify that they are not concurrently receiving USDA NRCS cover crop payments on the same acres. 3. Compliance with USDA Highly Erodible Land and Wetland Conservation requirements. Farmers will need an AD-1026 form on file with their local USDA office. 4. They will plant cover crop acres enrolled in TIP according to state NRCS conservation practice standards for practice code 340 (cover crop), or an alternate practice standard pre-approved by USDA and Farmers for Soil Health partners. They will also need to provide information necessary for payments, such as a W-9 tax form.

State partners will provide leadership for designing recruitment and enrollment plans that work best in their states and utilize grant resources to either build on existing programs or to develop new initiatives. NFWF, as the FSH grant administrator, will solicit proposals from state corn and soybean commodity groups and/or their fellow conservation partners.

Each state has a team of dedicated, on-the-ground experts called technical advisors (TAs). These individuals are farmers and conservation experts who can provide personalized guidance through farm visits or phone calls. TAs are a local point-person to address any questions about the program or the process of transitioning fields to successful cover crop adoption. They are equipped with extensive hands-on experience, research-based information and educational resources.

National Fish and Wildlife Foundation

Enrollment in this cover crop program will require farmers to verify select data points that have been captured and prepopulated via the Data Transmission Network (DTN) data license to FSH, including use of cover crops, tillage practices, and nitrogen fertilizer. This and other management practice data will be an input into COMET-Planner, COMET-FARM, and other third-party models to quantify GHG emissions and sequestration. The GHG emission estimates generated from COMET-Planner will be verified using COMET-Farm.

As COMET-Farm also provides estimates of soil C sequestration, FSH will take advantage of that opportunity by verifying soil C sequestration through soil sampling for soil organic C (SOC) and bulk density, at the farm field scale. The number and location of fields sampled will be determined to ensure statistically proportional representation of farms, soils, climates, and MLRAs in the population of farms that enroll in the program. Field-level soil testing will be performed on about 350-400 farms, based on a 95% confidence level and a 5% margin of error.

Does not specify