Conservation Stewardship Program
Your Stewardship Goals. Our Assistance.

Have you ever looked across your property and thought about some land management goals you would like to take to the next level? Maybe we can help.

No one knows more about your land than you do, and no one knows more about conservation than we do. Together we can develop a plan tailored to your land and your goals to help you increase productivity and protect the value of your land.

How It Works
Our Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP) helps you build on your existing conservation efforts while strengthening your operation.  Whether you are looking to improve grazing conditions, increase crop yields, or develop wildlife habitat, we can custom design a CSP plan to help you meet those goals. We can help you schedule timely planting of cover crops, develop a grazing plan that will improve your forage base, implement no-till to reduce erosion or manage forested areas in a way that benefits wildlife habitat.  If you are already taking steps to improve the condition of the land, chances are CSP can help you find new ways to meet your goals.

Benefits
CSP is for working lands. It is the largest conservation program in the United States with 70 million acres of productive agricultural and forest land enrolled in CSP. Thousands of people that have made the choice to voluntarily enroll in the program because it helps them enhance natural resources and improve their business operation.

CSP participants are seeing real results.  Some of these benefits include:

• Improved water quality
• Improved cattle gains per acre
• Increased crop yields
• Decreased inputs
• Wildlife population improvements
• Increased resilience to weather extremes

New CSP Grasslands Conservation Initiative
This new initiative will assist producers in protecting grazing land uses; conserving and improving soil, water and wildlife resources; and achieving related conservation values by conserving eligible land through grassland conservation contracts.

Eligible producers will have a single opportunity to enroll in a five-year contract. By signing the contract, producers agree to meet or exceed the stewardship threshold for one priority resource concern by the end of the five-year contract. NRCS will make payments for the initiative at a rate of $18 per acre each year not to exceed the base acres enrolled in a contract.

2019 CSP Enhancements
Enhancements are management activities that go above and beyond the minimum conservation practice standard requirements helping the producer achieve a higher level of conservation. 

Learn all the nationally available 2019 enhancements by selecting any of the land uses below:

Associated Ag Land | Crops | Farmstead | Forest | Pasture | Range

CSP Supporting Documents:

Conservation Activity Evaluation Tool (CAET):  Once your application has been filed the local NRCS conservation planner will have a one-on-one consultation with you to evaluate your current management system and the natural resources on your land using the Conservation Activity Evaluation Tool.  Eligible lands will be identified and the number of resource concerns that are currently meeting and not meeting stewardship thresholds will be determined.  Each applicant must be meeting stewardship threshold for at least two resource concerns on each land use at the time of application.  The applicant must also agree to address one additional resource concern for each land use by the end of the contract to be eligible.

Illinois CSP Funding Pools, Associated CAET and Ranking Documents

More information about CSP visit: www.nrcs.usda.gov/csp

For more information visit your local USDA Service Center or www.nrcs.usda.gov/getstarted.

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