Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/1481117
By Nick Hagerty | Photography Provided e Inflation Reduction Act, which just passed Congress, is a big clean energy and health care bill. It's not really about reducing inflation at all. But there is one big piece of the I that may be of particular interest to rural communities: $20 billion in programs for agriculture. is is a ton of funding for USDA programs that incentivize farmers, ranchers, and forest landowners to adopt soil and land conservation practices that mitigate climate change. ese practices are sometimes referred to as climate- smart agriculture or natural climate solutions. Most of this funding goes to existing programs under the farm bill. ese are all voluntary programs that you apply for and are managed by the Natural Resources Conservation Service. ey include: • Environmental Quality Incentives Program ($8.5 billion). EQIP is a working lands program, meaning that it is focused on practices on active agricultural lands. (is is in contrast to the Conservation Reserve Program, which takes land out of production). EQIP helps producers with specific conservation expenses, providing direct payments to partially compensate for installation and maintenance costs. • Conservation Stewardship Program ($3.2 billion). CSP is a working lands program aimed at long-term practices across an entire farm rather than specific one-time expenses. It makes acreage-based payments to producers under five-year contracts. • Regional Conservation Partnership Program ($5.0 billion). RCPP is not targeted to individual producers so much as teams of partners. Its mission is to build larger statewide or regional partnerships around specific types of conservation practices to beer coordinate efforts. • Agricultural Conservation Easement Program ($1.4 billion). ACEP helps to preserve working lands by purchasing easements – paying landowners part of the value of their land in exchange for permanent limitations on the use of the land. is means preserving the agricultural and conservation uses of land, keeping it in crops or grassland permanently. ese programs are all oversubscribed – the NRCS has only been able to fund 30 to 50 percent of the applications it receives. So, the I's additional funding will help expand What's in it for Agriculture? Reduction Act 17 farm406