Conservation Partners

Grant recipients will provide technical assistance to interested farmers and ranchers to develop management plans, design and implement conservation practices, share their experiences and lessons learned, and participate in Farm Bill programs, especially the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP) and Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP). A particular emphasis should be placed on promoting, designing, and implementing climate-smart agriculture and forestry (CSAF) conservation practices and reducing the Farm Bill practice contracting and implementation backlog. Funded projects will enhance wildlife habitat, soil health, water quantity and quality, and carbon sequestration while providing important social and economic benefits to agricultural producers. The Conservation Partners Program seeks to foster systems change and achieve environmental and social benefits at the landscape level. As such, it supports projects that generate impact on the order of thousands or tens of thousands of acres, with a strong preference for projects on the larger end of the scale. Projects that propose outcomes in terms of smaller acreages are not likely to compete well in the proposal review process.

Competitive projects will advance one or more of the following strategies:

• Crop management: Improve water quality and maximize soil carbon and wildlife values by increasing adoption of cover crops, reduced tillage, diversified crop rotations, perennial cropping systems, nutrient and pesticide management plans, precision agriculture, and other soil health practices.
• Grazing management: Promote plant growth above and below ground, improve wildlife habitat, and maximize soil carbon by establishing native grasses and optimizing stocking rates, livestock rotations, utilization rates, and plant rest and recovery.
• Irrigation improvement: Improve hydrology, in-stream flows, aquifer recharge, water conservation, and flood and drought resilience by increasing efficiency of on-farm irrigation practices and reducing agricultural runoff.
• Habitat enhancement: Enhance habitat values of working grasslands, field buffers, forests, wetlands, riparian zones, floodplains and other adjacent areas through native plantings, removal of invasive species, beneficial mowing, prescribed burning, fencing and other conservation practices.

Eligible applicants: non-profit 501(c) organizations, state government agencies, local governments, municipal governments, tribal governments and organizations, and educational institutions. To be competitive, applicant organizations must demonstrate capacity and experience commensurate with the scale of the project being proposed and the funding being requested.

Funding: Approximately $12.4 million in grant funding is available under this funding opportunity. Typical grant awards will range from $200,000 to $1,000,000, with an estimated average grant size of approximately $500,000. Matching contributions are not required. Grant period of performance will typically be three years following finalization of the grant agreement.