Up to approximately $1 billion will be made available for the Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities projects through this funding opportunity, which will build markets and invest in America’s climate-smart farmers, ranchers, and forest owners to strengthen U.S. rural and agricultural communities. Through the Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities, USDA will support the production and marketing of climate-smart commodities through a set of pilot projects that provide voluntary incentives through partners to producers and land owners, including early adopters, to:
a. implement climate-smart production practices, activities, and systems on working lands,
b. measure/quantify, monitor and verify the carbon and greenhouse gas (GHG) benefits associated with those practices, and
c. develop markets and promote the resulting climate-smart commodities.
Proposals must provide a plan to pilot implementation of climate-smart agriculture and/or forestry practices on a large-scale, including meaningful involvement of small or historically underserved producers, consistent with spirit of the Justice40 initiative; a quantification, monitoring, reporting, and verification plan; and a plan to develop markets and promote climate-smart commodities generated as a result of project activities.
Funding will be provided through two funding pools.
Proposals in the first funding pool (requests for amounts from $5 million to $100 million per proposal) will be large-scale pilot projects that emphasize the greenhouse gas benefits of climate-smart commodity production and include direct, meaningful benefits to a representative cross-section of production agriculture, including small and/or historically underserved producers.
Proposals in the second funding pool (requests for amounts from $250,000 to $4,999,999 per proposal) are limited to particularly innovative pilot projects with an emphasis on
· enrollment of small and/or underserved producers and/or
· monitoring, reporting, and verification activities developed at minority-serving institutions.
Deadlines:
· April 8, 2022 for the first funding pool (proposals from $5 million to $100 million)
· May 27, 2022 for the second funding pool (proposals from $250,000 to $4,999,999).