Last week, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced it is investing $40 million this year for 31 new projects through its Conservation Innovation Grants (CIG) program, one of the ways USDA brings together partners to develop innovative approaches to climate-smart agriculture. These projects, through USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), will support next-generation conservation efforts on working lands and develop market-based solutions to resource challenges.
Two of these projects will be in Florida. The first is a CIG On-Farm Trials project where the University of Florida will receive$1,658,031. It is for a program designed to advance precision variable rate irrigation technology to optimize crop water productivity and environmental sustainability.
This project brings together three different production rotations (corn/cotton; corn/peanut and corn/bean) and tests a novel suite of existing technology solutions. The University of Florida will compare variable rate irrigation (VRI) with soil electrical conductivity (EC) mapping and VRI with high resolution remote sensing with uniform rate irrigation to evaluate the environmental and associated economic benefits of adopting the VRI. The project will design a physical model-based predictive control system for adaptive VRI and develop a zone-delineation tool to assess the field variability at a regional scale.
The second investment is a CIG Classic project, where the Florida International University will receive $544,549 to work on a demonstration of crop rotation and cover crop influence on urban agriculture (UA) Farms through sensor and geospatial technologies.
UA production is increasingly coming under pressure due to its nutrient intensive and often nutrient-inefficient practices which are resulting in excessive nutrient pollution in urban regions. This project will evaluate and implement the various innovative conservation practices such as cover crops, crop rotation and agricultural monitoring through sensors and remote sensing, which would result in increased soil carbon, decrease in nutrient losses, leading to efficient UA smart crop production systems.
To see all of the awards granted click here.