Funder: Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS)
Due Dates: May 6, 2022 (First funding pool) | June 10, 2022 (Second funding pool)
Funding Amounts: Up to $1 billion total; awards range from $250,000 to $100 million per project
Summary: Grants to support large-scale and innovative pilot projects that implement, measure, and market climate-smart agriculture and forestry practices to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and strengthen rural communities.
Key Information: Two funding pools: large-scale projects ($5M–$100M) and innovative smaller projects ($250K–$5M) with emphasis on underserved producers and minority-serving institutions.
Description
The Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, is offering grants through the Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities program. This initiative aims to build markets and invest in climate-smart farmers, ranchers, and forest owners to strengthen rural and agricultural communities across the United States.
The program supports pilot projects that:
- Implement climate-smart production practices, activities, and systems on working lands.
- Measure, quantify, monitor, and verify the carbon and greenhouse gas (GHG) benefits of these practices.
- Develop markets and promote climate-smart commodities resulting from these activities.
A "climate-smart commodity" is defined as an agricultural commodity produced using practices that reduce GHG emissions or sequester carbon. Eligible markets include companies sourcing climate-smart commodities for supply chain goals, biofuel and renewable energy markets, branded consumer products, and other opportunities that provide premiums or additional revenue to producers.
Projects must include meaningful involvement of small or historically underserved producers, consistent with the Justice40 initiative, and must have plans for quantification, monitoring, reporting, verification, and market development.
Grant agreements will be made with a single entity ("partner"), but USDA encourages collaboration among multiple partners.
Due Dates
- First funding pool (large-scale projects, $5 million to $100 million): May 6, 2022 (closed)
- Second funding pool (innovative projects, $250,000 to $4,999,999): June 10, 2022 (closed)
Note: These deadlines have passed; the opportunity is archived.
Funding Amount
- Total program funding: Approximately $1 billion
- Award floor: $250,000
- Award ceiling: $100,000,000
- Expected number of awards: 50
Funding is divided into two pools:
- First funding pool: Large-scale pilot projects emphasizing GHG benefits and broad producer representation, including small and underserved producers.
- Second funding pool: Innovative pilot projects focusing on enrollment of small/underserved producers and/or monitoring and verification activities developed at minority-serving institutions.
Eligibility
Eligible applicants include:
- State, county, city or township, and special district governments
- Native American tribal governments (federally recognized) and tribal organizations (non-federally recognized)
- Public and state-controlled institutions of higher education
- Private institutions of higher education
- Nonprofits with or without 501(c)(3) status (excluding institutions of higher education)
- For-profit organizations other than small businesses
- Small businesses
Application Process
- Applications were submitted via Grants.gov.
- New users were advised to review the Full Announcement for steps before submission.
- Technical support for Grants.gov was available via 1-800-518-4726 or support@grants.gov.
- Content-specific inquiries were directed to the federal awarding agency contact listed in the Full Announcement.
- Applicants were encouraged to review the Full Announcement and related documents for detailed instructions and clarifications.
Additional Information
- The program emphasizes voluntary incentives to encourage producer participation and generation of verifiable GHG reductions.
- Projects must be tied to market development and promotion of climate-smart commodities.
- The USDA anticipated selections by Summer 2022 and award execution by September 30, 2022 (dates subject to change).
- Federal financial assistance training (Grants 101) is highly recommended and available for free at https://www.cfo.gov/grants-training/.
- USDA’s Farm Production and Conservation agencies apply federal financial assistance regulations to certain non-assistance awards.
External Links
Contact Information
For general NRCS contact and information: https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/contact