Natural Resources Conservation Service

The Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture proposes to empower citizen-science farmers with the tools and support to assess their soil health, set management goals, and track progress. This project pursues three innovative ideas for generating improvements in soil health: 1) a citizen-science approach to monitor community progress and draw insights from the practices of soil health leaders, 2) development of open-source farm management software to facilitate data collection on working farms, and 3) outcome-based marketing that educates consumers on the importance of soil health and adds value to the businesses of farmers practicing excellent soil stewardship.

The project will accelerate the production of “high benefit” biofuels. “High benefit” biofuels have high net energy production values, large carbon emissions reductions, sustainable methods of feedstock production, and drive substantial rural economic (farm sector) income, investment, and jobs multipliers. This project will use the voluntary buyer market for environmental credits, in an agricultural-sector specific manner, to leverage biofuel production economics, and accelerate the shift from fossil fuels to biofuels. AgRefresh, the applicant, is already employing a parallel strategy to leverage and accelerate farm methane projects through the creation and voluntary market sale of composite environmental credits called Pure Farm Energy™ Shares. Now, AgRefresh proposes to duplicate this business model within the emerging biofuels sector. AgRefresh, via the BAP Project, will monetize the positive benefits of farm-based energy systems in order to maximize the cash flow to farm-owned feedstock and liquid biofuels production projects. The creative use of market-based environmental credits allows private consumer demand to leverage and accelerate feedstock production volumes and liquid biofuel production volumes. This private sector, market-based approach to biofuels is fully complementary to existing Federal and State initiatives. The project has three components. Component one is the development of three environmentally rigorous, peer-reviewed standards. These standards will cover the measurement of impacts, the project specific accounting rules, and the establishment of a registry. The second component is the actual implementation of the project by AgRefresh, including the tracking of quantified results such as: tunes of carbon emissions reductions, biofuel energy volumes, and incomes, investment, and jobs impacts for producers and the associated rural sectors. Project standards and concepts will be shared via the advocacy and education component, the final component.

Agflex, Inc. will work with state personnel and crop advisory professionals to expand their capacity to assist farmers in implementing innovative strategies to meet conservation goals. Agflex, Inc. will highlight, teach and implement BMP performance guarantees for corn farmers reducing both nutrient use and tillage in DE, IA, IL, IN, MD, MI, IN, NC, NE, OR, P A, VA, WI and point-non-point water quality credit trading in MN and PA.

Keywords: nutrient management, water quality, BMP Challenge, environmental trading

One of the goals of this project is to accelerate the adoption of conservation tillage acreage for silage corn in California's Central Valley by providing financial guarantees against the risk of crop losses associated with the transition to a new tillage practice.

2009 Final Report - Agflex Inc    - Final Report   PDF, 1.24 MB

Agren, Inc., in cooperation with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, will develop a geographical information system (GIS)-based expert system to facilitate the use of Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) technology for conservation planning. The three-year project will further develop, demonstrate, and evaluate the use of LIDAR technology for conservation planning in Iowa, as well as develop an electronic decision-support tool to facilitate use of this technology by conservation planners. The use of this decision-support tool has tremendous application for practitioners working one-on-one with farmers.

Keywords: conservation practice planning, GIS, LIDAR

Final Report    - Final Report   PDF, 43KB

This project seeks to promote control structures with grass buffers along ditches, rivers, and any water impoundment to reduce nutrient transport and improve water quality, from field surfaces and subsurface tiles. This demonstration project will retrofit existing buffers to develop criteria necessary for widespread adoption, as no such guidance currently exists. Finally, in addition to the traditional tools, the project will use non-conventional outreach methods that utilize farmer contact, such as farm forums.

The Agricultural Drainage Management Coalition will promote and characterize the unique technology of drainage water management (DWM). This innovative multi-state project will develop a set of regional recommendations that are necessary to facilitate and encourage the widespread adoption of DWM. Farmers will play a central role in assessing the economic effects of DWM on farm profitability. Each pilot farm will use the latest technologies, including satellite-controlled water control structures, resulting in a truly managed water table by farming landowners. Through implementation of the project, significant data will be obtained to document nutrient savings from DWM, a necessary step in nutrient trading. The Agricultural Drainage Management Coalition will use non-conventional outreach methods, such as farm forums, to utilize farmer-to-farmer contact.

Keywords: drainage water management, subsurface drainage, controlled drainage, drainage

Erosion rates in the central coast region of California are among the highest west of the Mississippi River. The purpose of this project is to develop a new conservation practice that can help solve chronic soil erosion problems by encouraging stormwater run-off to infiltrate vegetated swales above cultivated fields or gullies in the erosion-prone central coast region of California.

Demonstrate and transfer conservation technology and practices to primarily Spanish-speaking Beginning Farmers and Socially Disadvantaged Farmers and introduce and support the target farmers? partnership with NRCS by demonstrating and transferring technologies and practices.

Final Report    - Final Report  

Proposes to provide direct outreach and technology transfer to Historically Underserved Producers (HUPs) in Monterey, Santa Cruz and San Benito counties that increase adoption of winter cover cropping with efficacy in terms of farm productivity, conservation and profits.

Keywords: cover-crops

The clover demonstrations in perennial pastures of the Coastal Plain region will show producers effective ways to include clovers, and where feasible, new perennial clover cultivars into their grazing systems. As a result, producers will learn which cultivars work for their particular conditions, how to effectively establish the clovers, how to implement successful prescribed grazing techniques needed for clover longevity, how to successfully manage soil fertility, and the many benefits that clovers provide. NRCS will be able to add new information to the Technical Guide resulting in improved technical and financial assistance to clients.

Keywords: white clover, grazing systems, clover, intermediate white clover

Final Report    - Final Report  

Providing adequate water for livestock and vegetable crops on an appropriate scale is a problem for many small farmers. Most do not have irrigation systems, cannot leverage economies of scale to obtain them and have not historically participated in USDA programs to address these challenges. In addition, rainwater runoff can move sediment and nutrients into area streams, impacting water quality. This project will assist historically underserved producers with implementing practices to capture and store rainwater runoff from farm buildings thus reducing soil erosion and nutrient and sediment runoff to streams, and increasing the sustainability of small farms by improving access to affordable irrigation systems based on appropriate technology.

Many streams in northern Alabama are on the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency’s list of impaired streams, due in large part to the number of poultry operations in the region. Environmental regulations require poultry producers to provide temporary storage of litter prior to land application. The purpose of this project is to demonstrate and encourage the adoption of low-cost temporary storage facilities that comply with environmental regulations, providing options to assist producers for whom larger, technologically-advanced buildings would be a financial burden.

Keywords: dry stack, poultry litter, non structural

Good management practices are knowledge-driven. This proposal seeks to provide farmers and water resource managers with the knowledge needed to improve water resource management. Recent droughts, litigation with neighboring States over water allocation, and endangered aquatic species have created a high level of concern over water resource availability in the Georgia. A key barrier to better water resource management in Georgia is a lack of data on how water is used in the State, especially in the agricultural sector. This project will help to bridge this information gap through implementation of the Farmer Portal, an interactive, Internet-based technology that was developed by the Georgia Water Planning and Policy Center. The Portal collects information on agricultural water use and crop yields and gives farmers immediate, practical, and customized feedback in return. It has been demonstrated that conservation adoption is more likely when potential adopters understand their performance relative to others. The Portal provides such relative performance data to encourage the adoption of conservation practices. The Portal gives farmers a tool that can track water use and production against real-time benchmarks based on data from other farms operating under similar conditions in the same region or watershed. This project will demonstrate the Portal through outreach and facilitate its adoption with direct technical assistance and incentive payments. The project area consists of two water-stressed sub-basins in southwest Georgia: the Ichawaynochaway and Spring Creek sub-basins. The Portal technology is fully developed, but successful implementation requires farmer participation. This project focuses on promoting farmer adoption of the Portal technology and securing adequate participation to support a reliable database. The results will be transferable to other basins in Georgia as well as other irrigated agricultural lands across the U.S. We are also currently working to expand the applications of the Portal through cooperative arrangements with agencies such as the USDA Farm Service Agency.

Keywords: irrigation, water conservation, internet access, water use reports

Final Report    - Final Report  

The overall goal of this project is to implement a unique and innovative, market-based solution, for effectively managing energy generation on a small broiler poultry farm with four houses, while addressing the highly critical issue of broiler litter disposal. Mississippi, which is the fourth largest poultry producing State in the U.S., generates about 2.2 billion pounds of litter annually. New environmental regulations and health concerns related to mad cow disease and watershed are putting increasing pressure on poultry growers to curb the practice of conventional litter spreading on pasturelands or for cattle feeding. Additionally, the significantly higher energy costs of a poultry operation today are placing a tremendous financial burden on the farmers. An on-farm anaerobic digester is an innovative approach to conserve water, soil and atmospheric resources while generating bio-based renewable energy and eliminate the problems of litter disposal as well as dead birds. Additionally the market for carbon credits is emerging in the U.S. and since methane qualifies for 21 times the credits for each unit of carbon dioxide, the returns on investment in digester projects may become a respectable revenue source for the farmers. Even though the science behind anaerobic digestion is well understood, using an anaerobic digester to manage broiler litter is a truly innovative approach and has only become feasible due to a recent change in poultry raising practices as described in the narrative. A very important element of the proposed system is that this project will be a scaled-down, user-friendly, production-oriented version of an experimental poultry litter digester that is currently operational on a ten-house farm in Mississippi and was funded in large part by the State of Mississippi. A smaller scale digester on a farm with four broiler houses will also lend itself to the study of a modular approach to constructing digesters for larger farms in the poultry belt States.

Keywords: manure management, poultry manure, energy

Final Report    - Final Report  

The Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay proposes to develop, pilot and promote new approaches to improve agricultural landowner access to environmental markets that will accelerate whole farm conservation and improve the quality of water flowing to the Chesapeake Bay. The project will establish a number of conservation investment mechanisms to help offset the barriers associated with participating in three existing mitigation banking programs in Maryland and Virginia.

This project proposes to harmonize state and local agency forest mitigation and trading requirements to ease adoption by agricultural producers, aggregators and credit buyers like developers. The project will test and refine market infrastructure, so it is immediately useful for landowners, public programs and credit buyers. It will also complete 8-10 forest-based practice pilot projects with Environmental Quality Incentives Program-eligible producers in southern Maryland to test forest protocols and market infrastructure. The project will also assist local governments in meeting the nutrient and sediment goals in their Watershed Implementation Plans by simplifying the implementation of forest based offsets and credits and easing their workload by establishing the Chesapeake Forests Offset Bank.

A New Revenue Source for Virginia Farmers Reduces Erosion and Improves Water Quality in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed    - USDA Publicity  

USDA Helps Water Quality Trading Systems Thrive in the Chesapeake Bay Region    - USDA Publicity  

Cleaner Water, Nutrient Credits    - Video URL  

Implement innovative habitat management activities for bird conservation within the context of standard management practices for forest health; and concurrently use outreach and educational activities to broadcast our concept to a regional governmental and private audience which will enhance both bird conservation and the participation in and delivery of NRCS programs to support ecological and economic goals in ponderosa pine habitats on private lands.

A significant obstacle to inducing producer adoption of best management practices is the possibility that, in the short-term, such practices may reduce production yields. The purpose of this project is to test and evaluate the performance of an innovative, market-based, performance guarantee approach that increases producer adoption rates by removing economic risk as a barrier.

Keywords: nutrient management, insurance, no-till, BMP Challenge

Final Report    - Final Report   PDF, 54KB

Proposes to establish a pollinator habitat credit program in Michigan. AFT will engage at least 15 business entities to fund the establishment of pollinator habitat through this ‘Payment for Ecosystem Services’ program.

Keywords: pollinator, pollinators