National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF), for Farmers for Soil Health (FSH)
Through this project, FSH intends to create a new transition program that will build cover crop capacity nationwide. With a national and state strategy, FSH’s approach is four-pronged. First, FSH will establish a new financial assistance (FA) program. Second, FSH will strengthen its technical assistance (TA) and education programs in its targeted states. Third, it will create and launch a nationwide Measurement, Reporting and Verification (MRV) platform for conservation practices, including cover crops. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, FSH will create an online public marketplace to connect farmers to climate-smart commodity opportunities and incentives. The FSH marketplace is being designed with ease-of-user experience in mind to combat the significant burden and challenge farmers are experiencing in today’s carbon programs.
Farm Eligibility
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.
Money Matters
$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 (200 acre cap).
May be stacked with existing cover crop programs except for NRCS programs or other programs using federal dollars.
Not applicable
Contracting Info
The Partnership for Climate Smart Commodities program is 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.
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.
NFWF will offer competitive grants to state commodity groups that will provide a variety of TA to meet local or regional needs in their states. Additionally, FSH national partners will be providing expertise in developing critical components for a broad educational plan to provide support to states. The Center for Regenerative Agriculture (CRA) and the Soil Health Institute (SHI) will collaborate to prepare the following educational tools: an online interactive farmer educational presentation series (36 sessions over three years) on cover crop best practices; eight short “how-to” videos for farmer audiences on cover crops and soil health; eight informational fact sheets on cover crops and soil health for farmers and lenders; and nine regional in-person training workshops for commodity staff and other partners. Additionally, CRA and SHI will provide continuous educational training and TA support for FSH commodity groups and related NGO partners through two full-time staff (CRA Cover Crop Specialist and SHI Soil Health Specialist). These specialists will lead educational efforts and serve as technical advisors for the entire FSH program, with additional staff from both organizations assisting with training and materials.
Technical Info
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
