Grants For Conservation Efforts

“At the core of what NRCS does is our conservation practice standards and these are tools that producers enter our offices across the country to engage with to support their operations with conservation sustainability,” said Natural Resources Conservation Service Chief Colton Buckley. “The precursor to the implementation of how those work are conservation innovation grants or CIG.”

Buckley noted there are two grant categories.

“CIG Classic supports third-party entities to develop innovative solutions to on-the-ground conservation problems,” he noted. “And CIG On-Farm Trials, the second program, encourages the adoption of innovative conservation practices by working directly with producers on on-farm trials. And this process ensures that the solutions that we find in CIG Classic are actually operationally viable.”

NRCS Has Several Conversation Priorities

For the latest Conservation Innovation Grant application process.

“We’ve announced $65 million for this fiscal year, broken up $50 million for on-farm trials for that conservation implementation and $15 million for CIG Classic,” Buckley said.

With the chief noting award decisions to be announced by the end of the fiscal year.

“You just head over to grants.gov. The deadline's July 27th for both CIG Classic, as well as CIG on-farm trial,” Buckley said. “We've got a modernized, streamlined application to show those farmer-focused outcomes that are proposed to be implemented.”

As in past years, both components of CIG, the on-farm trials, and Classic, each contain project priorities.

“CIG on-farm trial priorities, we've got irrigation water management technologies, nutrient management, grazing lands, and soil health demonstration trials,” Buckley said. “And then for CIG Classic priorities, we've got farmer-focused conservation outcomes to include water management like water quality, as well as water quantity, soil health, habitat improvement, and concern ecosystems by managing pest pressure. The major focus across everything we're doing at NRCS, particularly in CIG, is to support keeping working lands in working hands.”

More information about Conservation Innovation Grants and the current funding application window are available online at www.nrcs.usda.gov.