Credit: Mark Vandever. Public domain.
Back in May, the USDA Farm Service Agency (FSA) announced an initiative to quantify the climate benefits of Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) contracts. The multi-year effort will enable USDA to better target CRP toward climate outcomes and improve existing models and conservation planning tools while supporting USDA’s goal of putting American agriculture and forestry at the center of climate-smart solutions to address climate change.
FSA Administrator Zach Ducheneaux recently told Southeast AgNet that climate smart agriculture may look different from one person to another.
In an earlier release, Ducheneaux said “CRP is a powerful tool for implementing voluntary, measurable conservation outcomes to mitigate the impacts of climate change. Further quantifying program benefits will allow us to better target CRP to achieve continued climate wins across environmentally sensitive lands while strengthening our modeling and conservation planning resources for all producers.”
To learn more about climate benefits through CRP, contact your local USDA Service Center.