The USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) in California has officially announced Fiscal Year 2025 (October 1, 2024 through September 30, 2025) federal assistance opportunities for agricultural producers, including through the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP).
According to certain reports, EQIP, along with the Inflation Reduction Act, has made more than $100 million available for conservation practices and initiatives. These practices and initiatives include, for instance, National Air Quality Initiative (NAQI), which is designed to assist farmers in replacing outdated engines with new and cleaner-burning technology.
Next up, the available financial assistance will be used to facilitate activities that, on their part, support wildlife habitat creation and enhancement on farms, as well as ranches. Furthermore, it will be directed towards NRCS and Bureau of Reclamation WaterSmart partner projects so to significantly scale up water infrastructure, delivery, and application on farms.
Not just that, the funding will also provide all the necessary backing to National Water Quality Initiative for targeted conservation actions. This it will again do to enhance water quality. Another detail worth a mention here is rooted in the potential for this new funding to aid Joint Chief’s Landscape Restoration Partnership with agricultural producers, forest landowners, tribes, and public land managers, a partnership which is largely focused on mitigating wildfire risk, improving water quality, and restoring forest ecosystems.
“We are excited to support California’s producers with an historic investment in on-farm conservation this Fiscal Year,” said Carlos Suarez, NRCS California State Conservationist. “With the addition of the Inflation Reduction Act, we will be investing approximately 50 percent more federal funding to help producers address their unique resources concerns and help them achieve their stewardship goals.”
Hold on, there is more, considering we still haven’t touched on the fact that special provisions are also available for historically underserved producers. In the context of EQIP, historically underserved producers are eligible for advance payments to help offset costs related to purchasing materials or contracting services up front. Alongside that, these producers, in particular, can also receive higher EQIP payment rates (up to 90% of average cost).
Among other things, we ought to mention how applicants seeking financial assistance must meet Farm Bill Program eligibility in conjunction with the Farm Service Agency, which includes meeting the Highly Erodible Land and Wetland Compliance requirements and the Adjusted Gross Income limits.
Moving on, NRCS California will markedly leverage ACT NOW to process conservation applications across selected ranking pools to deliver conservation faster. In case you weren’t aware, ACT NOW makes it possible for NRCS to immediately approve and obligate a ranked application. This means no longer having to wait for all applications to be reviewed and pre-approved.
Beyond the funding itself, making the given development even more important is NRCS’ ability to provide conservation technical assistance at an outright zero cost. The idea behind doing so, like you can guess, is to let the producer easily access personalized advice and information, based on the latest science and research. Hence, assuming a producer chooses to receive the stated assistance, NRCS will get down to work with them and develop a free and personalized conservation plan made up with conservation practices that can help the producer reach their agricultural production and conservation goals.
As for what specific components this plan might offer, it will feature land use maps, soils information, inventory of resources, engineering notes, and other supporting information.
