Precision Conservation Management (PCM) is one of several programs included in a recent collaboration between Field to Market: The Alliance for Sustainable Agriculture® and the USDA through Field to Market’s Climate-Smart Agriculture Innovative Finance Initiative. The Initiative, which is part of USDA’s Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities Grant Program, will use innovative finance mechanisms to accelerate climate-smart practice uptake by farmers, leveraging private sector demand to strengthen markets for climate-smart commodities.

This project will use $70M in grant funds from USDA, combined with $66M in matching funds and $40M in leveraged funds from industry support, to reach 10.6M acres, provide 2.79M metric tons in GHG reductions, and provide $81M to producers.

The Initiative will be split into 8 projects with various partners. PCM will be the partner on the Climate Smart Practice Linked Incentive and will leverage funds from this grant to offer an incentive to farmers for cover crops, reduced-till, no-till, strip-till, reduction in nitrogen use, and various practice enhancement options through an existing partnership with PepsiCo. This pay-for-practice program is designed to provide cost-share opportunities for farmers, which makes conservation practice adoption more economically feasible.

We are very excited to get to work on this grant and thank the USDA and PepsiCo for funding this important work, not only by PCM, but all the partners on the grant. This opportunity will allow us to offer innovative incentives at scale that will help us reach farmers we were unlikely to otherwise.

Greg Goodwin, Director of PCM

Full details on Field to Market’s Climate-Smart Agriculture Innovative Finance Initiative can be found here: https://fieldtomarket.org/field-to-market-enters-agreement-with-usda-to-begin-work-on-partnerships-for-climate-smart-commodities-grant/